


California Dreaming

by DarkAthena (seraphim_grace)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Biting, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Het, Humans vs. Werewolves, Knotting, M/M, Magic, Marking, Moirae, NOT A STEREK FIC, Other, Sterek hints, True Love, Violence, Werewolf Hunters, Werewolf Mates, Werewolves, Witches, a fic WITH Sterek, may get more tags as the story progresses, nano 2013
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 10:52:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/DarkAthena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The world began when he saw her, but his story started when she died.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You say that they've all left you behind

**Author's Note:**

> This story MIGHT have Sterek hints, but they will never be more than hints, because this is Deucalion's story.
> 
> Also - don't think that just because he's the main character he's a good guy - because he's not
> 
> Also this is not an A/O fic, but it does deal with the concept of alpha and beta and omega in regards to werewolf packs!
> 
> Also I did not kill anyone who did not die in canon - I'm not that mean, besides I really didn't have to be. The Major Character Death I warned for is Laura.
> 
> \--  
> edit: I've added dates to make it clearer when things are happening, and chapter titles.
> 
> The Miss Blake in this is a character from Spn who ran an auction house, it worked for what I wanted, she is Sarah Blake, nothing to do with the character of Jennifer who will be in it - later

  
Original art by Keire_ke

Jan 2011

Duke hated Manhattan. Laura had said it was where you went when the world ended and he supposed it was true. He remembered the other line she had given with an offhand gesture and a smile in the dark of their bedroom, cities like cats reveal themselves at night. She was wrong in that, cities were like werewolves, appearing urbane and hiding their claws and fangs in the night. He laughed to himself, maybe they were like cats after all. He could hear the other party goers chattering their banalities, the clinking of glasses and the soft playing of the piano, the shuffling of cloth as people moved. He hated the trappings of this, and suspected he would have even if he had been human.

This was necessary, he reminded himself as he deliberately whacked the ankle of one of them with his cane, watching as the lawyer apologised to him. Duke didn't need the cane, it was a human affectation, but he did love to make the humans squirm. "Ah, Duke," Sarah said moving through the crowd. She was wearing bangles that jangled on her wrists and there was the tap click of her high heeled shoes across the floor. "There you are," she took his hand, she was careful of him although she knew what he was, Sarah knew so many things she shouldn't have. "But where's Laura?"

Laura hated these parties, Sarah hated these parties but when you dealt in high end antiques the vast majority of the money and sales came from networking, so they networked, and Laura was charming, and Sarah was delightful, and Duke occasionally clipped people with his cane, accidentally of course.

"Something came up in California," he said, "a bit of a family emergency, to do with her family's land, she really wanted to be here though."

Sarah didn't need to be a werewolf to hear the lie in it. "She wanted to be here about as much as I do." She answered with a smile in her voice. Duke had known Sarah before he was blinded and she had been young and lovely, with dark hair and bright eyes, he had even been attracted to her, as much for her pragmatism as her loveliness. Thinking of what he remembered of Laura he supposed that he had a type. Laura was dark haired and lovely too. Or maybe, even before they met, he was looking for Laura in other people.

There is a bark of laughter to their side, a woman's laugh with nothing of softness in it. Kali moved so quietly that even to werewolf ears that Duke had had to rely on her signature scent to even notice her approaching. She had bought it from an online vendor simply because she had learned it had her name, hibiscus and wild rose, tobacco and dark red wine, with the wild smell of her, loam and moonlight on her skin, with the electric crackle of her power. "She wanted to be here as much as Brynhilde wished to marry." Kali said, "Duke, it is also clear that Laura dressed you for tonight's event."

"I'm not in the powder blue suit again, am I?" He said tilting his head, "although the fit on that is lovely, and it's easily the most comfortable one I own."

"And that is the voice of true love," Sarah said with a beaming smile, "she could dress you in rags and barbed wire and you'd compliment her."

"You haven't worn that suit." Duke told her, "it's truly glorious." He leered a little, "and she does love me in it, apparently it's just my shade."

"She is your better half." Kali said with a sly smile, "your presence probably wouldn't be missed, but she always is."

Someone took the step and twist to join the conversation. "Your wife is a breath of fresh air," one of the lawyers said, "we do miss her at these little soiree's."

"I miss her when she is not in the room." Duke said calmly, without the word of a lie in his mouth. He adored Laura, for a thousand reasons he could name and a thousand more he could not. She was mate, wife, his other, the yin to his yang and the gold in his soul and the fire in his loins. He hated that she was in California but he understood why she was. when she told him about the call he had kissed her, and pressed his forehead to hers and told her to go, although it was like ripping himself in two to be apart from her. She had left Beacon Hills for many reasons but one of them was that she had had to protect her uncle, to lead the Hunters that had destroyed her pack away from her uncle, trapped in a human hospital, unhealed and silent with eyes as dead as Duke's own. She went back to save her uncle. He understood that - but she had laughed, missing this event was the only plus side to the whole affair.

Laura was young and wild and free, as much a wolf as she was a person, the sort that transformed into her full wolf form to lie down by the vent of the central air because she could and it was apparently delicious, and would stand, slipping into her human skin like a pelt that she could discard at will, naked but for the happiness he could smell on her and kissing him welcome, before nuzzling into the skin of his neck, before turning back, shifting back to the wolf, and then flopping down on the vent with a whuffing sigh.

Duke couldn't do the same transformation, but she often eased him towards her, to bury his hands in her fur and lie there, on the floor, in a pile of limbs and fur. He loved her completely, enough that he only had awe and wonder for her wolf form, and not envy.

"Still in the honey moon period?" the lawyer said with a leer, "I wish I had found myself a lovely young wife like Laura, of course putting her through school probably helped with the wooing."

Duke didn't answer as Kali growled low in her throat. Kali and Laura hardly ever saw eye to eye, they disagreed on everything and happily despised each other but Duke was her alpha and Laura was his mate. A threat against her was a threat against the pack and those that threatened the pack were destroyed, first the hamstring, then the throat. There was the slow satisfaction in knowing that by tomorrow this man would have a terrible accident, perhaps he would be mugged on his way home, or a home invasion.

"I think your wife would worry, Daughtry," Duke said calmly, "being as, like in my own circumstance, she is much wealthier than you." He said it calmly. It was true as well, with the life insurances and the inheritance and the fact she owned huge swathes of Northern California, left to the wild as a nature preserve but still very valuable, Laura was stupidly wealthy, Duke was only comfortably so. He had once laughed with her that people thought of her as his trophy wife and she had laughed and said if anything you're my trophy husband, i only keep you around to look good and for the sex, love. And they had laughed.

"Of course what woman wouldn't worry," Daughtry continued unworried, "here I am in the presence of the beautiful Miss Blake and the Goddess Kali, we are simply lacking our Queen."

"Not a queen," Duke corrected wanting to say "alpha" but he did not, "a khaleesi." Sarah laughed.

"Then are you her horseman or the dragon she keeps on a leash?" Daughtry asked.

"Are you a guest or an ass?" Sarah answered without batting an eyelid, "because I am certain that the only reason you are here is a wonderful 16th century piece of Italian porcelain that lately came in to our hands that you believe belongs in your wife's collection and would certainly help her overlook all those affairs no one talks about which means you borrowed a friend's invitation, because I certainly did not invite you."

Daughtry took a tight breath. "We all have affairs," he said, "are we not talking about the fact that Duke here has a beautiful wife and yet bought a house in Brooklyn for his boy."

Duke's laugh covered Kali's snarl. "Ah, yes, my boy." He said, "Derek is a pretty thing, isn't he? of course, being as he is my wife's brother I suppose mistakes can be made." He leant forward, the light catching the red tint to his opaque aviators, "but I am, like my wife, quite monogamous, till death do us part is not a vow lightly made, don't you think, Daughtry, now if you would excuse me, I have to find my assistant and make sure that your invitation to the porcelain auction goes astray." He thumbed the top of his cane, the one that hid the knife, before he pushed past him. Kali and the twins would enjoy taking this asshole down, he had a momentary flash of Laura as she had been that night in the Catskills Mountains when she had, in her alpha form, taken down a deer, with blood all over her face and down her throat, and the smell of it and arousal thick upon her and that this man could question his devotion.

The first time that Duke had seen her, one of the few times he had seen her before Argent had blinded him, his wolf, a usual dark passenger that waited within him like a weight and a hunger, a part of him that was separate like two people in the same car with the same destination but different opinions, had jumped within him like a puppy, wagging it's tail and yipping, whining and reaching for her. And she had tilted her head and he knew that she felt the same, and her mother, the terrifying Alpha Talia Hale, had just sighed and rolled her eyes like she was aware of what was happening. How could he question Duke's devotion when even Laura's disproving mother had known it. They were Mates, and wolves mated for life.

\---

Nigel Daughtry unlocked his door and kicked off his shoes before he walked into his apartment. He hung his jacket up in the cupboard by the door and poured himself a glass of whiskey before he went into the dark parlour. "Hello, Daughtry." Duke said, his eyes glowing bright enough to make his aviators shine.

"How did you get in here, Volkov?" Daughtry asked, he took a step backwards. There was a gun safe in the bedroom, but it didn't matter, Duke had already found and appropriated it.

"I used the door." He said calmly. Daughtry didn't need to know about how good werewolf hearing was for picking locks and how proud Aiden was of his little skill. "It's surprising how easy one can gain entrance to an apartment like this, how far a little grudge will take you."

"Ha ha," Daughtry told him, "you've had your little joke. You can get out now."

"Actually," Duke said in a low even voice, "the joke was yours and I want you to apologise."

"You wouldn't act like this if it hadn't hit so close to the knuckle." Daughtry was used to using his arrogance and wealth to get his own way, well, he was used to using his wife's wealth. He was a professional, a banker, but that wasn't going to save him.

"You insulted me, and you insulted my wife." Duke said bluntly, "and while I don't care what you say about me, you do not talk like that about my Mate." His fangs slipped down to his lips and he could feel his ears point, his claws coming out.

"What are you?" Daughtry said taking a step back towards the door.

"Me," Duke asked, taking the cap off his cane to reveal the blade hidden there. It had been a gift from Laura. "I'm just a wounded husband." The first blow from the cane sliced through the skin of Daughtry's arms, then a second, "defensive wounds make things so much easier to explain, don't you find, Daughtry."

"Please, don't kill me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't understand." Daughtry was crying, his shirts were ruined with blood from the scratches on his arms.

"You didn't understand," Duke told him, "you're so used to getting your own way, you bull around like you're the only one that matters. I will admit I'm a little more unforgiving than usual, with my Mate in California, so I won't accept your apology." He twisted the cane and drove it into Daughtry's leg, slicing through the artery there. It was a death blow and both of them knew it, as Duke lifted his cane, and wiped off the tip with a cloth he pulled from his pocket. "Boys," Aiden and Ethan were twins, with identical features and solid strong bodies. He had saved them, on Laura's bidding, and they were loyal. If Laura spoiled them then it was Duke who guided them. "Enjoy yourselves, you know what to do." He took a step over the prone form, it had been minutes at most since he had stabbed the man, and he was already unconscious. He'd be dead by the time they left.

The boys would take a few things, break many more, destroy the door and it would look like a robbery gone wrong, that poor Daughtry had interrupted them and one of the few knife thrusts had caught him in the thigh. There would be a poor attempt at a tourniquet made, the robbers realising and maybe they would call in a 911. It didn't matter to Duke, he liked walking through New York at night, he might call in at a local pizza place and get a reciept, just in case.

The smell of freshly baked rye bread made the decision for him, a little deli with tables that the girl behind the counter was willing to guide him towards, with thick black European style coffee, and the bread, fresh from the oven, and slathered with cream cheese and sprinkled with chives and curls of smoked salmon. He would have to bring Laura to this place. It was quite charming and the food was very good. He reached into his pocket and found the little post it note Laura had left for him, the braille letters reminding him to be safe and underneath it she had signed it, he could feel the L and it showed how much she cared, that she had left this for him, before she bundled her brother into the car Duke had bought her on a whim, stuck it on his toothpaste where he would find it. The simple message - be safe, i love you. Signed with her name, and the paper rubbed against her wrist to that it smelled of her.

Duke had a hundred such notes, kept in a cedar box inlaid with broken ivory in his desk at work, it had been a box that his assistant, Lupe, had told him was pretty but would have cost more to restore than it was worth. He had tried to give it to Laura for her sewing things, in the hope she wouldn't leave them all around the apartment, or on the couch - but it had not been big enough, so instead he kept it for her notes and tokens, keeping them near him when he was at work.

"You have the face of a man in love," the waitress said, she was wearing sneakers which had a crack in the sole, he could hear it gasp when she walked. Her socks were acrylic, worn in from the day. His senses had gotten so much richer when Argent blinded him, but he would have traded them in for a single look at Laura's face.

"I am very much that," he agreed, folding his napkin in his hands, smoothing out the crease with his thumb. "And am blessed to be married to the love of my life."

"I can hear it when you say it." She laughed and it was a warm sound. She was late middle age, heavy set, she wore glasses that caused her brittle grey hair to crinkle around her ears when she smiled. "Oh where were you when I was new?" She asked, "when I was young enough to want to believe in love."

Duke laughed at the compliment, after Daughtry he had felt so defensive of Laura's love, she was so much younger than him. He was rich so she must be with him for his money, they did not know how his wolf purred when he was near her; how full his belly felt just from the scent of her; how the weight of her hair against his skin was godlike. It was delightful that someone would glory in their love without questioning it. He was the big bad wolf, the demon in the dark, but all of his light was the simple detail that he loved Laura Hale and she loved him. "I didn't believe in love either, until she found me."

"I was expecting you to say it was a him," she said and topped up his coffee, "it seems these days with all the pressure on young couples like yourself it's harder and harder to find love, but with that lovely nice suit and in this neighbourhood, well it's getting harder to tell." Duke laughed with her. "Now, does a handsome young man like you have a photo of your lovely wife?"

Duke's lips tightened, before he pulled his phone from his pocket, he couldn't use one of those touch screens no matter how many apps they created for him, but Ethan, who was young and believed in love far more than any other werewolf killing machine that Duke had ever heard of, had long since set Laura's picture as Duke's wallpaper. "That's her," he said showing the waitress, "or I'm told it's her."

"She's beautiful." The waitress said, "but I think your friend has played a trick on you, that is a big black dog." For a moment Duke started, then he smiled, "it might be my wife herself that played the trick on me, that is our dog, she likes to run in central park and I don't like the idea of her doing it alone, so I got her the biggest meanest dog we could, who is, of course, a total softy."

The waitress laughed again, the conversation was charming. "You want some more lox?" She asked, taking his plate, "before you go back to your wife."

"She's in California at the moment," Duke said with a touch of sadness, "because of family issues, I couldn't get away from work to go with her. It's just me and the dog for a week."

"Ah," the waitress said understanding, "and the house feels empty without her. I've been there, well that was before I discovered my husband was a cheating no good son of a bitch, but the house felt empty when he was gone. Now I'll just get you some pie, apple and sour cherry sound good, you just sit there as long as you like." Across the room the bell over the door jingled and the waitress called out "I'll be just there," to the three young men that bundled in. There was a smell of cordite about them, and mineral oil, at least one of them was carrying a gun. There was a panic sweat, and something sour and the hint of opium about one of them, and the sharp sweet smell of meth on another. He could hear one of them, his teeth chattering as he tried to calm himself, he didn't need to see them to know what they intended. They were going to rob the place.

Duke laughed to himself into his coffee, of all the luck, he thought, to stop into a deli for something to eat on the night it was robbed. It would, he considered, cement his alibi if the details with Daughtry were worked out, how he had been seen arguing with him in the party, how Laura was absent and unable to verify what time he got home, he couldn't have killed him if he was part of the robbery. Instead he dialled Kali, speed dial number 5, and let her listen in on the conversation. She'd be here soon enough. The waitress had been kind and personable, and the food here was good. "Go into the back," he told the waitress. "I've got this." Stopping the robbers would be child's play after all. He stood up, holding out his hands as he walked towards them, it was disposing of the bodies that became difficult.

\--

That Monday night was when he stumbled when he was on his way to bed, tripping, as was usual, over a shoe Laura had left on the floor and righting himself with Wolf reflexes, before shaking his head. Then he stumbled.

It was like a great wave of vertigo crashed down on him. For a single instant every nerve ending in his body screamed and he thought he might be sick with the pain. The floor rose up to meet him as the walls spiralled away. He caught himself with both hands flat on the wooden floor when he fell.

And then, as soon as it had come, it was gone.

He muttered to himself about Laura leaving her shoes everywhere, and the possibility of water in his ears, or even a slight dizzy spell, and continued on his way to bed.


	2. Your heart broke when the party died

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deucalion meets Laura

Mar 2003

  
  
Deucalion Volkov met Laura Hale the day after he met her mother, the notorious and rightfully feared Talia Hale.  
  
Talia Hale was a legend amongst Wolves. Most Wolves had two states, human and their altered form, this was called a Beta form. Alpha Wolves, or pack leaders, had a third transformation which was closer to a full wolf, or the Beta form exaggerated. This was what was commonly accepted, however there were a few Wolves, who for reasons no one really understood- or if they did had never shared their answers with Duke- who could completely transform and they were considered hallowed amongst Wolves. Talia Hale could completely transform into a large black wolf, and because of that the emissaries, who served as a bridge between the Wolves and their past and history.  
  
Talia Hale was beautiful, with dark hair, an oval face, wide cheekbones and mischievous brown eyes, her lips were perhaps a little too thin for conventional concepts of beauty but she carried herself like a queen with the knowledge that she was easily the most powerful woman in the room and not just because she was beautiful, but she had a toothy smile that lit her up like a pinball machine on tilt.  
  
She had the sort of easy confidence of one who is totally in control of her abilities, who knew she was the first person in the room that people looked to, who looked like an empress in ermine and gold when she wore ratty sweats and old jeans with her hair bound up in a loose pony.  
  
Gerard Argent was building a war. There was a common misconception that wars began when one country acted against the other, this was not true. Wars started when one country was forced to act against the other by small and persistent acts that could not, individually, be considered acts of aggression.  
  
The vast majority of Hunters had a simple and easily avoided code. Sometimes Wolves lost control and they had to be put down. Their code was for this - we hunt those who hunt us. This meant, in it's simplest terms, if a Wolf killed a man he went from predator to prey. When this happened the Wolves abandoned the Wolf who had transgressed, or if the Hunters were persistent and sought to agitate, they would present the Hunters with the head of the Wolf in question.  
  
Thus it had always been.  
  
Then came Gerard Argent. The Argents who would harry a wolf until they snarled and threatened a hunter, where they would then put the Wolf down. They would then hunt the pack until every last member was dead, bisected and burned alive.  
  
Ennis Armitage among Alphas was well respected and even tempered. If he had a flaw it was that he pushed his betas a little too hard but they were loyal and he loved them as good alpha should. He was based out of Florida and had a small, relatively young pack that were entirely made up of born wolves who had, for their own reasons, had problems with their family alphas and needed to be treated like grown ups, although in most cases Ennis treated them like a drill instructor, but was as loyal to them as they were to him.  
  
Then Gerard Argent and his team of pet thugs killed a pregnant beta who had, for medical reasons at the behest of her emissary, had had to have an abortion. They shot her in the head in front of Ennis, then whilst they distracted Ennis they cut her in half with the justification that she had killed a person. Then they tempted Ennis to attack them, to give them the justification to put them down like the Dogs they were.  
  
One of Ennis' betas, the husband in fact of the one that had just been murdered in cold blood, had wrestled the alpha down with pleas and begging. Ennis had been forced to run.  
  
The call went out when a beta of Alpha Katherine Lee from Minnesota, most commonly called Kali, had been cut down fetching milk under the concept that a local animal attack was his actions. The coroner announced that the wounds had been created by a mastiff, one suspiciously like one registered to a local hunter. They had apologised of course, with an oops, surely you can see why we were mistaken.  
  
So the emissaries called a council, every alpha with a pack larger than four, with allies covering the entirety of packs in the US. Deucalion was the last to arrive in Beacon Hills because he had stopped off, at the insistence of his own emissary Marin, west of Oppenheim in New York State, in a small cottage in the shadow of an old mouldering Victorian pile, where three old women formed one of the most powerful covens in the Continental United States - a group that called themselves the McKerrit sisters, but who everyone else considered the Moirae.  
  
The Moirae, Ada, Amabel and Adeline had been as vague as usual, but then as he went to go, Adeline had pulled him aside and handed him a knitted pull over and a box of cookies "for your girl" she said and then ushered him out the door with a pinch on his ass before he got a chance to say that he didn't have one.  
  
That was six days before he had met Laura.  
  
He had driven down to Beacon Hills, Talia had kids in high school and didn't want to leave them for the meeting, with three of his most trusted betas in a convoy behind him. Talia had said no more than three and with Marin in the car beside him it was an easy stricture to keep. He felt grown up, like a elementary school teacher on a field trip, they had put the buddy system in place, at first jokingly but then deliberately because it worked, and instigated a phone tree so that the four betas back in New York that were only nominally associated with his pack were kept up to date. His pack was small but he offered shelter to omegas.  
  
He had driven down with Bruce Springsteen in the CD player and thought- between the occasional chorus which HAD to be sung along to - how much it meant that he had been invited. His pack was neither that large or influential. He was a vocal advocate of peace amongst the Wolves, he had reached an accord with the Chastel's, the main hunter faction in New York, and now Talia Hale - who could go full wolf - had invited him to this concord to discuss the Argent problem. He believed with his whole heart that it could be resolved amicably.  
  
He could have no preparation for how hideously wrong he had been.  
  
\---  
  
Deucalion met Talia with the other alphas at a run down diner just outside her territory. She was accompanied by her husband, a tall broad bear of a man with well managed scruff and bright eyes in a flannel shirt. She was tall but her husband was easily half a head taller than her again, and looked like the sort of werewolf who lived wild up on a mountain and bench pressed bears. He easily stood six foot five and if you looked at all the other alphas in the room, even including Ennis who could be mistaken for a WWE wrestler he was the one that people would assume to be the most powerful werewolf.  
  
Talia looked at him like he was a dear, pretty thing, when he carried over the tray of coffee, kissed her on the cheek and told her he was going to pick up their youngest from kindergarten.  
  
Katherine Lee, Kali, was beautiful, with long straight dark hair, dark skin, that suggested at least one Black parent, and the figure of a super model. She knew she was powerful and there was much of the huntress in the way that she moved.  
  
Ennis Armitage was built like a mountain, with large muscles and a deep tan. Talia took one look at the two of them, her nostrils flared slightly and she placed the burned apricot scent between them. "Mates," she said calmly, "what are the odds? They tell us it's a myth but it has such a distinctive odour. I recognise it from my parents."  
  
"Mates?" Ennis asked, "I've never met this woman before in my life."  
  
"Your Wolf doesn't need to have met her." Talia said calmly, "It knows her, it always knew her, can't you feel it, the way it yearns for just a scrap of her attention. Can't you smell it, like burned sugar and citrus? and taste it on your tongue. I can hear your wolves from here, striving for each other."  
  
"I have a lover." Kali said in a firm voice.  
  
"Maybe," Talia answered, "but now you have a Mate." He could hear the way she capitalised it. "Not every wolf has a mate, or encounters them in our short lives," Deucalion had never heard it called that before, Wolves tended to live, without Hunter interference for three times as long as a human, "you are lucky, and it's something you need to resolve between the three of you."  
  
"Our packs live halfway across the country." Talia shrugged as if she didn't make the rules to Ennis' objection.  
  
"You'll sort it out, it's nice to know that something good has come out of this horror show." She continued, and drained her coffee, sweetened with almond milk. "Now, let's make this official, all alphas gathered here I formally welcome you to my territory and invite you for supper tonight with my husband and I, my eldest, Thea, is taking the youngest five out for the evening, and Laura is at soccer practise until late, so there will be no children, if that was what you were worried about." She smiled, "and we can hammer out the terms of this arrangement and where we agree to hold the concord."  
  
Later that night, at that very supper, Deucalion met Laura, still her soccer kit, with her cleats in her hand and his wolf sang a tarantella in her honour. She was, at that point, two months shy of her seventeenth birthday.  
  
Talia looked between the two of them and her husband did too, and at the kitchen his face tightened, his eyes narrowed and he muttered to himself, "oh fuck no."  
  
\---  
  
Laura referred to her mother's decision to let them meet, always in public, never for more than four hours, as a strategic defeat. She had accepted as gracefully as Talia Hale had ever done anything to put in place the rules when they would have done anything for their wolves to be together, yipping and circling within them. It was strange, Deucalion felt, because more often than not the wolf felt like an odd sensation of weightless prescience. He could feel it like something under his skin, like a creature whose form was entirely different from his own moving within him, he could feel it like claws under his fingers and a general sense of both malaise and nausea as it tried to burst it's way free of his skin in an explosion of viscera and understanding.  
  
His wolf knew Laura and it loved Laura on no more than seeing her across the room in her soccer shirt and muddy sweatpants.  
  
The rules were simple, public meetings, but as many as they liked but only for a short period. Then after she had graduated, Talia was adamant about that, and that Laura was shortlisted for the New School in New York, and as Deucalion was based in New York anyway that was something she couldn't argue with, although both Laura and Deucalion had been certain that otherwise it would have been after she had graduated university.  
  
Deucalion was to make no attempt to curb Laura's future, although he had not even considered such a thing, and they were allowed to converse by text and phone, but sexting and illicit skypes were not to happen.  
  
Talia knew the story about mates, she had grown up on stories of them, but she herself had never found her "mate" but she could not imagine loving her husband any less, for she loved him fiercely and without question, but there was part of her, she admitted, that still believed in the fairy tale, but at the same time her baby was only sixteen years old.  
  
Deucalion would have walked through a ring of fire for Laura, and he hadn't even spoken to her when he agreed.  
  
Laura was beautiful, in the way that her mother was, with the same dark hair and wide Balkan cheekbones and soft wide lips, but her eyes were the same bright colour as her father. Her chin was a little pointed, and there was some freckles across her nose where she was wearing no make up from her soccer game where some girl called Meghan had fallen badly and had to be taken to the ER so they had been called off early.  
  
"Would it be terrible for me to bring Meghan flowers as a thank you?" Deucalion asked and Laura laughed. His wolf bayed in delight, like it was singing to the moon, which it had never really done before. It had always been present, twisting under his skin like it was under a heavy blanket, something present and intangible, around Laura it was like a puppy, with oversized paws and jaws that could rip a hyena in two.  
  
"I was thinking a muffin basket," Laura answered, "as a get well gift, of course, from a team mate." Her eyes were sparkling with mischief and there was a smile on the corner of her mouth, and like her mother when she smiled she lit up like a pin ball machine on tilt. He mistakenly thought he could not love her any more than he did at that moment.  
  
He was naive and a child when it came to the heart and after he had known her a week he loved her exponentially more. A week after that and he had thought his second assessment to be barely a blip on how much he loved her then. As Ennis and Kali tried to overcome what it was that their wolves decided for them with who they were, with what they were, Laura and he never wondered or misstepped or questioned, overwhelmed with the simplicity of him touching her hand, or the way her hair moved when she talked, or how poor Meghan had discovered an heretofore unknown allergy to of all things, blueberries, that had been in the basket, and how she felt almost guilty although no harm had come of it.  
  
Meghan, poor unlucky Meghan, was their totem, their mascot, their lucky charm because she brought them together, her bad luck had evened itself out on the great karmic scale to become their good luck, and that was enough.  
  
And when Gerard Argent slaughtered his own men at a meeting to work out a peace accord, when he struck Deucalion hard enough to break his jaw before driving two arrows full of chemicals that burned and sparked into his eye sockets he thought, sure he was dying, of Laura, not of her smile that crinkled the corner of her eyes, or even the lament that he had never seen her naked, but instead the curve of her jaw behind her ear where there was a small mole that he wanted to kiss.


	3. Drape your arms around me and softly say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deucalion gets the call.

Jan 2011

Guadalupe, Lupe, Sandoval was the personal assistant of Mr Volkov. She had been hired after an accident during his work had left him blind, and in need of someone to handle basic office tasks that included managing the mail and answering the phone. 

Lupe loved her job, she knew she was over paid for the tasks that she did, because Mr Volkov was fiercely independent and incredibly capable despite his disability, so she took over small tasks of meaningless nothing to fill the time. She went to the store to get the flavoured coffee he would never think to ask for, and a large bag of the expensive beans for the coffee kept in the office. She learned how to make tea with a pot, in the English style, because that was what he preferred in the evening, and kept the fruit teas that were made with a tea ball in her desk for the rare occasions his wife came to visit.

Lupe adored Laura, who was tall and lovely and wore ugly hand made sweaters and knew designers by name and managed to score sweet bargains, who wore bitching boots and laughed at Mr Volkov and he laughed with her.

Then there was Miss Blake, who worked mostly upstate but came in at least once a month to check invoices and things, she was the public face of the company, mostly because Mr Volkov had a bad temper apparently, although Lupe had never seen it, where Volkov did most of the sourcing of the antiques that they sold. 

There was something of a rumour that if you wanted something from the past you went to Mr Volkov, if it existed and it was legal then he could find it, and if he couldn't, then he would still charge you for looking. Being blind hadn't stopped him from being the best in the business, if you wanted it then Volkov would find it, and sometimes he found old trinkets that were worthless, but the medal of Santa Lucia, had meant the world to her grandmother, even if it had been something stuffed in with something more valuable.

Occult trinkets were something of his specialty.

So Lupe loved working for Mr Volkov, so she had his messages ready, typed out in braille and on his desk when he came in, with a vaccuum flask of the spiced coffee he favoured most in the morning, his computer switched on, and his dry cleaning, which he told her, again and again that she did not need to collect, on a hook at the back of his office. The roomba had done it's business and was locked out of his office, because he sometimes tripped on it, and made sure that the office was aired out because he was sensitive to smell.

Lupe loved working for Mr Volkov, and the impressive wage and lack of duties had nothing to do with it. When asked why he had hired her instead of all the other candidates who were so much better qualified he had offered her a coy smile and said - I really like your name.

He was wearing jeans and a tan coloured hooded sweater, clearly made by his wife, as the fit was perfect, and there was a lot of love sewn into it, and it was clearly the height of fashion, something that Mr Volkov knew nothing about. It looked soft and comfortable, and was paired with the sort of hi top chucks that Laura favoured him in. "Mr Volkov, your messages are on your desk." She said as he came in, "I've made your coffee, and I've opened your PC for you, is there anything else I need to do to get you settled?"

"No thank you, Lupe," he said as he walked through the office, the light catching on his aviator sunglasses, another sign of Laura's influence because before she had come to New York his sunglasses didn't suit him nearly as well. Laura dressed him because he didn't care what he wore, but he cared what she thought of him, and as one of the rising stars of the fabric art world, her textiles were appearing on runways all over New York. Her fabric jewellery was already highly sought all over the world, and yet she would walk into her husband's office, sit down at Lupe's desk, and pull out her crochet hooks working as they gossiped. 

Laura was wonderful like that. And she knew the best gossip. She liked working in the office with Volkov, although she sat outside with Lupe so as not to distract him, but he would raise his head at the sound of her laughter and smile. Her needle would flash in her hands, as the brightly coloured threads were twisted into circles and eyelets and long chains, twisted together to make necklaces and brooches and other amazing things, which when they were done, were folded up and put into her bag, and a different sized hook would come out and she'd start again in a different colour, without breaking the thread of her conversation.

Lupe wondered to herself when Laura was getting back from California because they had an appointment to go shopping and hit the January sales when the first rush had passed and they brought out the stock that was a couple of seasons old. It was even part of Lupe's job description as long as she bought at least one thing for Mr Volkov to wear. That was Laura's influence as well.

Mr Volkov was sat at his desk, running his finger tips over the messages she had printed out for him with the braille printer, his lips moving unconsciously. She had his day planner up in front of her so she knew exactly what his day entailed. He needed to make some international calls, and Mr Volkov spoke several languages, so he spoke to his factors in their own languages. He was looking for a specific old radio, a crystal radio by a famous occultist from Japan that could apparently hear ghosts. The projected sale amount was incredibly huge, certainly more than an old radio was worth - even if it could hear and record ghosts.

He had been hunting the radio down for a few weeks now, which involved long and shouted conversations in Japanese, to the person who wanted to buy it, and what sounded like threats to the Russian who was thought to be in possession of it, or at least had an idea where it was last seen. This was not the first time he had had such problems locating an item, but the last time it turned out that the camera, which is what he had been looking for, was broken and useless. They still paid the best part of a million dollars for it

Lupe didn't understand why people wanted old broken cameras, she knew there was a supernatural, she had grown up with her Abuela who saw spirits and demons everywhere and called Mr Volkov a "lobisomem" with a twinkle in her eye that he met with a smile in the corner of his mouth, as if they shared some secret private joke. Lupe didn't know the word, she just knew that her grandmother had taken to growing aconite in the house, because she liked the smell, just after Lupe started working for Mr Volkov.

She finished off her coffee as she updated his day planner with the information that she got from his messages, and saved it to the shared server. She always reminded him verbally anyway, and was just taking her cup back to the small kitchen area in the office- It wasn't much of a kitchen, just a bit of counter with a coffee grinder and press, an old sink, and a small fridge that hummed like the anger of a thousand bees, according to Mr Volkov, before it occasionally puttered out a bizarre clanking noise that one day would signal it's end, now it just clanked and Lupe listened for the buzz which always started up again after a few seconds. She only heard it now after it clanked, possibly in the hope it would stop- when the phone rang.

"Hello, Volkov antiquities, you're through to Mr Volkov's office, Lupe speaking, how can I help?" She had her pen ready to take down the message because Mr Volkov didn't take calls until 11am at the very earliest and it was barely 10am.

There was a sigh on the other end of the line before a male voice spoke. "This is Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department, would it be possible to speak to Mr Volkov?" 

Lupe frowned for a moment, chewing her lip. Mr Volkov didn't like to be disturbed but this sounded important. Sometimes items came up with dubious pasts and Mr Volkov was referenced and they wanted information that was easier to get from him than the legal team, often it was as much as a "yes, I was unaware that the item was seized by Nazis in the second world war when I purchased it, however when I discovered it was I immediately got in contact with the appropriate authorities, but thank you for following up on that, yes, certainly I'll give you the details of where I purchased it." They got one of those phone calls every couple of months, you couldn't deal in antiquities without it happening at least once, and with the high end ones they traded in it was more likely than not. But there was something about the way the man was speaking that suggested that this one was more important, and Lupe didn't know what it was. "Deputy," she began, the man cut her off with the correction, Sheriff, again reinforcin the idea that this was not as simple as these calls usually were. "I'll just see if he's available for you." 

She couldn't just transfer the call through because Mr Volkov ignored the click click of his phone when she did that, she had to announce it so she climbed out of her chair clacking across the floor in her expensive heels. "Mr Volkov," she said pushing open the door to his office, "I know you don't like to take calls this early, but I have Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department on the line for you." His lips thinned and his head tilted as she recognised the name. "Do you want me to put it through or take a message?"

He expelled a noisy breath through his nose. "Thank you, Lupe," he said, "put it through. It's probably Laura's been doing something she shouldn't be and needs bail." Lupe nodded and offered him a smile though she couldn't see it, before she went back to her desk, her hands smoothing out the fabric of her skirt when she sat down. She remembered these details later, because that was the moment, she thought, when the world ended. "Thanks for holding, Sheriff, I'll just put you through now." And she pushed the button.

She didn't watch Mr Volkov's reaction to the phone call, nor did she hear their exchange, though she wished, later, that she had, she could see the engaged light on his line and carried on with her business as they talked. The whole conversation took perhaps four minutes. Then the light went out. There was an eerie silence, even the fridge had stopped with it's infernal buzzing, and then Mr Volkov made a sound like a wounded animal, he cast back his head and keened, it wasn't a scream, for it lacked that definition, and as Lupe turned he got up from his desk and began to rip the shelves from the wall, still making that unearthly, horrifying noise, as he dragged the files and nick-knacks from the wall and against the floor. His face seemed to change as his shoulders were brought up towards his ears.

She grabbed her bag and tried to remember the things that Miss Blake had drilled into her head about what to do if Mr Volkov lost his temper. "Stay calm," she repeated, "walk out of the office, do not run." She had never understood that until now, but as Mr Volkov destroyed his office, to the extent of throwing his desk, she didn't want to attract his attention. "When you are outside phone me." Those were the rules, Lupe had always thought that they were a little stupid but she wasn't going to question them. She slipped off her heels because she didn't' want him to see her, and walked on her stockinged feet to the door, and when she hit the stairs she ran, and ran until she reached the coffee shop at the end of the street, the independent one who put ground ginger in her coffee when she looked more harried. 

She didn't even go to the counter, just sat at a table in the back and started to shake, as she pulled out her phone, her fingers slipping on the touch screen as she tried to dial. "Miss Blake," she said when the phone was answered, "it's Lupe, you said," she stopped, trying to steady herself as she spoke, "you said to call you if Mr Volkov lost his temper, he's," she stopped again, licking her lips, "you said to get out and phone you."

"It's okay, Lupe, he wouldn't hurt you." Miss Blake said in a calm voice on the other end of the line. 

"The phone," Lupe started, "there was a phone call, from Beacon Hills, it was to do with Laura, I," she stopped again, "I passed the call through and then he just started making this noise and he destroyed his office."

"That's okay, Lupe," Miss Blake said but her voice was tighter than before. "Here's what we're going to do, I'm going to phone Ms Lee and she is going to deal with him, and you are going to get yourself a nice hot drink and calm down a little, then you're going to go home for the rest of the week, paid, and I'll phone you when I know more about what is going on." Lupe nodded, licking the lipstick from her mouth as she nodded, sucking her lips as she shook. "You did the right thing," Miss Blake repeated. "It's going to be okay, I know it's frightening now."

"I didn't know what to do." Lupe repeated.

"I know." Miss Blake said, "that's why you were told to call me if it happened. I'll find out what happened and where we go from there, okay?" Lupe made an agreeing noise, and felt around in her pockets for enough change to buy herself a drink, she had her subway token, because she didn't keep that in her bag, but her purse was in the office. She hadn't grabbed it or her coat, and she didn't know what to do, she was coatless in New York and she didn't want to go back to get her bag.

\---

It was that evening, when she lay on her couch, with a crocheted blanket that smelled of cats pulled up around her, drinking hot chocolate full of whiskey whilst her Abuela murmured soft words in Spanish to her, calling her "little one" as she stroked her hair, that the phone rang and it was Miss Blake.

She sat up to hold the phone to her ear. "Lupe, it's Sarah, Sarah Blake." She said, "I have news, are you sitting down?" This was it, Lupe thought, they were going to fire her, and she hadn't done anything wrong, she just hoped they'd let her get her things and would give her a good reference because she had worked hard for them. "Duke, Mr Volkov," Miss Blake paused, "He's had to go away for a while, so I'm going to be moving into the Manhattan office, you'll be working with me from Monday. I just wanted to let you know that you did everything right, and you're not in trouble in any way." Miss Blake paused on the other end of the phone. "The phone call, it was about Laura, you were right." There was another pause, "I phoned them and found out what I could after Mr Volkov was taken to the center where he can rest." Miss Blake paused again before she finally said. "Laura's dead, they think she was murdered, they wanted him to go and identify the body." 

"But he can't, he's blind." Lupe blurted out.

"I know," Miss Blake said calmly, "so I'm going to, for him, he's gone to stay with some relatives upstate, so I'm taking over his duties until he's ready, it's the least we can do." Lupe made an acknowledging noise in her throat as her understood the rage now. Mr Volkov adored Laura, if she was dead, if she was gone she didn't know what he would do, destroying his office had clearly been the least of it if they had taken him someplace upstate. He worshiped Laura, Lupe knew that if she loved someone that hard, that fiercely and then to have them taken from her - it would decimate her. 

"What about her brother?"

"As far as I can tell," Miss Blake said, "They think he's responsible."

Lupe almost dropped the phone in shock. Laura had tried to set Lupe up with her brother, who was as gorgeous as she was, but angry and she figured out that anger was a lot of shyness as much as teenage angst, and that he was more open about his scars from the loss of their parents - Lupe didn't know how they had died, just that they had - and Derek, had hung on his sister's every word like she hung the moon, even to the point of agreeing to a blind date when he clearly wanted to run off somewhere to hide. "But he wouldn't, he..."

"I know," Miss Blake said, "we've got legal on it now, it's mostly that he was there when she died, in Beacon Hills. I'm flying down there tonight, so the office is going to be closed until next Thursday, so enjoy your time off, I just wish it hadn't come from such terrible news, I know you liked Laura." She paused, "We're all going to miss her terribly."

And Lupe nodded and felt even worse over how scared she had been of Mr Volkov, because she was sure in his place she would have done much, much worse.


	4. Can we dance upon the tables again?

May 2003

The great desolation of his pack's loss hurt more than the loss of his eyes as Deucalion waited in Deaton's treatment room. And it rankled to be treated like an animal. Talia had dragged him here after she found him, amongst the dead. She had carried him to her car and drove him here, muttering how he couldn't die, she couldn't explain it to Laura if he died, and that had been the only thing that had caught his attention, that had made him hold on, whilst beside him Marco whined and bled out on the back seat.

Deucalion hadn't said a word as the vet treated him.

Then they took the gauze from his eyes and he learned that he was blind. He didn't say anything when Marco, crazed from pain and so close to death that there was only one inevitable end, and Deucalion had to put him down, like he was a dog.

He felt empty, like he had been hollowed out, and he just sat there, with Marco's blood still on his hands, as he just sat there, amongst the cats who had shied from him when he came in, it was Deaton's early warning alarm system, because cats hated supernatural creatures and started yowling in their presence, but it had been long enough that they had settled themselves and were just seething in their cages.

"Oh thank god," the scent of Laura washed over him, the first wave of burned apricot and sugar then the following notes of carnation, plum and a soft sweet musk, and then she was beside him, and her hands were on his face. She pressed soft kisses to his forehead and he could smell the onion on her breath, which was soft and sweet with cinnamon gum she had chewed to cover the fact she had been eating a cheese and onion sandwich, and sweet white coffee, and she was clinging to him, and there was salt there, fainter than the onion.

Laura was crying, and she was crying for him.

His wolf, which had been pliant, licking it's wounds and curled up, twisting upon itself, suddenly reacted with a snarl. It didn't like that Laura was crying and it was a simple thing, with three basic states of interpreting others, fight, feed and fuck, and yet it wanted to lick her muzzle, to bury it's nose into the nap of her fur and let her know that he loved her and she was never to cry, that he would defend her, that he would have her back when they came to fight, that he would never let her be hurt again.

Deucalion hadn't thought his wolf was a romantic.

He felt, and the analogy was old and tired but nonetheless true, like Solomon upon first seeing the Queen of Sheba as she bathed under the moonlight.

The image ran through his head in a Leonard Cohen lyric, "your faith was strong, but you needed proof, you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight over threw you. She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair, and from your lips she drew the hallelujah." and for the first time in his adult life he understood, as she pressed him to the softness of her breast and actually berated him with soft half words about getting hurt, and there was the promise that if he was stupid enough to do it again she'd kill him herself, because she was his mate, the one his wolf had chosen, and she was perfect, and she was there, with her fingers in his hair and her tears running over the scar tissue of his eyes as if she could wash them clean.

It was at once the softest ease he had ever known and overwhelmingly terrifying. His wolf knew and didn't care what he thought at all, but the way she smelled was all he ever wanted. He wanted to bathe in her, to wrap himself up in her and let the world burn if it would stop her crying.

His fingers found themselves up under the scratchy softness of her mohair sweater, to the warm skin underneath, her wife beater rucked up and loose from her jeans, and how his wolf rumbled it's pleasure at the touch of her, and he wanted to worship her and mount her and bring her a kill all at the same time as his wolf rolled through him. And in his head Leonard Cohen sang his song of benediction.

"You stupid, stupid man," Laura murmured through her tears into his hair. "I will, I'll kill you if you do this to me again." And it was easy to forget she was a seventeen year old girl, that before they had met she had worried about home coming games and calculus, that she had had dreams and hopes that didn't include him because his wolf knew her, and loved her, and so he loved her too. He loved the smell of her, the burned apricot mate stink, the funk of lanolin on her hands, and the tang of mineral oil. He loved the way she laughed - the way she threw her hair back. He loved the coconut smell of her shampoo and the way her hair felt in his hands. He loved the faint scents of her, carnation and plum and a pale musk, and the cinnamon gum she chewed, and the light smack of her ylang ylang detergent and cotton smell of her panties underneath it, with the faint stink of the sweat that gathered under her arms, despite a sharp aluminium deodorant, and beneath the swell of her breasts.

"Mom has given us the cabin," she said into his hair, "until you get your feet back under you." Her voice was thick with tears, "no one is going to take you from me," she took a wet and noisy rip of a sniff, "so we're going away, Duke," and she was the only one to call him that, he was Deucalion, alpha of his pack, but he was hers.

It said something of Talia's guilt at what had happened, the pack he had brought with him from New York was dead, slaughtered by a hateful old bigot of a man. He was flayed open, his wolf torn into pieces and as blind as he was. All it knew was Laura. All it wanted was Laura. Talia guessed what it must be like for him, because she could not know.

He was an alpha without a pack, because Gerard had killed them all.

"Come on," she said and took his hand in hers, he could feel the lacquer on her nails and the dry skin of her palms, and it was such a small thing but in that instant he put his life in her hands.

\---

Laura never bothered treating Deucalion as incapable when she helped him to the car. She took him by the hand to the car, one he could have recognised because it stunk of her and grass from her soccer cleats, there was an artificial pine scented card hanging from the rear view mirror. She didn't help him into the passenger seat, she didn't even bother to open the door, and she didn't even reach across him for the seat belt even though the car started to beep to tell her that he wasn't buckled in.

She just reached across and squeezed his knee with her hand as he fumbled with it but she didn't take the clip from him, she just put hers in place with a clunk click sound and started the car.

"The cabin is a bit run down," she said, "it might smell a bit damp, but I'm sure we can get it aired out in no time," she was driving capably and Deucalion felt the breakdown on the edge of his awareness, that she could drive and he couldn't, that it was another thing taken from him. "We can do this, Duke," she said and squeezed his knee again, and the heat from her hand leeched into his leg and it didn't matter that he couldn't drive any more. It didn't matter because she was there and she loved him and that was enough.

It didn't matter because she smelled like carnations and plums and musk and he loved her.

It didn't matter because she hummed while she drove, listening to Pink Floyd and Yes and Cream and knowing all the words and trying hard not to sing along and he loved her.

It didn't matter because he loved her.

\---

"Oh watch out," Laura called out as he made his way to the cabin, "there's some," she stopped as he collided with the bottom stair with a smack against his shins and a muttered expletive, "stairs." He turned to her with a frown. "I was trying to warn you." She told him. "There's a rail to your left, I'll just get the bags out of the trunk."

He grabbed the rail tight enough that the wood creaked under his grip. "I can help," he told her.

"I know," she told him, "but I've got this, the whole purpose of us coming to this cabin is because you're going to walk into things and it means no one sees it but me, and well," she gave a shrug, "I bathed your eyes when it first happened, I saw you cry and swear and beg for me, do you really think I'm going to care if you bang your shins on the coffee table?"

He was humbled by her in that moment, "besides, if I don't get to see you naked at the end of this week I'm going to be sorely disappointed." With that bombshell she walked past him, bags hanging from her arms, up the stairs and to the door which she opened with a flourish. "Are you coming, love?" she asked. She couldn't have silenced him better if she had pulled her sweater over her head with the demand that he ravish her now, although his mouth watered like she had asked that.

By the time he had made it up the stairs, and he felt like there was certainly more than three of them for all the effort it took, she had managed to make coffee by boiling a kettle on the hob, he could hear it whistling. She was making tea. She was even making sandwiches. He had caught himself on a trunk and walked into the door frame. She hadn't made comment on it.

When he caught his toe on the throw rug she caught him, his face landing against the soft mohair over her shoulder. "You smell good." She said into his hair. "Are you going to kiss me, or not?"

How could he resist? He didn't think he could, so he didn't, he tilted his face up and dragged the tip of his nose across her cheek until his lips found hers, and dragged them across hers. Her breath was cinnamon sweet as her tongue pushed at his lips, because Laura wanted him as much as he wanted her. She found his left hand with her right, and twined their fingers together as he took in great gulping breaths of her. His other hand reached up to her waist, up under her mohair sweater to the jersey cotton of her wife beater. She made a low moan into his mouth and her left hand found the front of his jeans.

"Three steps backwards," she mumbled into his mouth, "there's a couch." It was such a good idea he wondered how he had lived before he had known her and her wonderful ideas, she should be in charge of all the decisions from now on, because he didn't want to stop kissing her, from dragging his lips against hers and sucking on her tongue.

The couch hit the back of his knees and he collapsed unto it, pulling down a blanket that was draped over the back, and she took the opportunity to remove her sweater and wife beater, because when she met him there, legs either side of his thigh, she was only wearing her bra. She took his hands and brought them to her breasts, he could feel the soft sheer fabric, too fine and slightly rough to be anything but a mesh or tulle, and the lace that surrounded the cups. She was not traditionally busty, but her breasts were high and firm in the cup, and the nipple made her sigh pleasantly against his mouth when he caught it with the side of his thumb. "It's red." She said and he could hear the lie in her voice, smell it on her, but he didn't care because it gave him the image of her in the scarlet of most lingerie, he could feel the flowers along the edge of the cup and thought of her skin pushing against the red mesh, and his cock jerked at the image.

He had gotten hard quickly, like he was a teenager at the feel of her, her skin hot against his hands as her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his shirt.

Her smell was washing over him, thick with lust and arousal, "god, you're gorgeous," she murmured against his mouth, and his wolf rumbled with delight that she was mate and love and proud of him and desired him.

"We need," he mumbled.

"Taken care of." She corrected him. "We're good. I'm wearing a ring."

He ran his hands the length of hers but she wasn't wearing any jewellery, perhaps she wanted a child, he thought, trying to stop kissing her, they were mates after all, but Talia had been specific that they wait until after college, but, she was sucking on his lips.

"Not that kind," she laughed into his mouth, "one that stops you getting pregnant." She reached around behind herself, he heard the way her skin rustled, and then the release of elastic and the creak of her underwires before her bra was gone, landing with a clump across the room, "unless you don't wanna."

"Oh, I wanna," he growled at her, bringing his face forward into her shoulder. He hated that he could not see her, he wanted to see her, he wanted to see her determination and skin and where the moles were on her torso. He wanted to see her breasts, he could feel the tightness of her aureola but he couldn't see what colour they were, were they pink or brown. He guided the nipple into his mouth, carefully, as she groaned and leaned forward.

"Fuck," she murmured and he should have guessed she would be noisy, her hands at his belt, he wanted to press her to a bed.

"Not here," he said into the skin of her breast, "I," she peeled off his shirt, scratching her nails through her hair.

"Not gonna hurt me."

"Not," he answered as she pulled him up for another kiss, his hands kneading over her breasts, almost hard enough to hurt but she just seemed to want more. Her hunger was spicy sweet on her skin, with salt and fire and grass. "Bed."

"Good idea," she agreed, "but," she got his belt open, and with a jerk had undone the buttons of his fly, her hand reaching into the open fabric and he almost howled as his cock jerked in her palm, "it's all the way over there." She groaned, "why am I still wearing jeans?"

He was kissing her neck, and both hands were on her breasts, but he wanted her jeans off as much as she did, he wanted to bury himself in her, to wrap her around him and never exist without her again. Fucking her was secondary to that.

"If we go to the bed," he scraped his teeth across the tendons of her throat, he could feel her pulse butterfly against his tongue. "We can lose the pants on the way."

"Hmmm," she agreed, "you have all the good ideas."

"You're going to have to lead me." He told her, "I don't know the way." And she laughed again, but she wasn't laughing at him, she was laughing with delight, she was full of love and it was spilling over into laughter.

"Oh you know the way."

 

He was naked when they reached the bed, hands all over each other, her claws already scraping across his back and the pain only made it more delicious. The butt of his hands skimmed over the serration of her ribs, as she ground herself against his thigh. She was wearing cotton panties, cheap walmart ones where the elastic was coming away from the fabric and it suited her, because she didn't try with silky lingerie or uncomfortable things to entice him, she wore what she wanted because they were comfortable, waist band pulled up over her stomach to her navel, with the elastic over the crease of her thighs.

He pushed his fingers under the elastic and cotton, to the crinkle rough pubic hair to rub against her, "you haven't shaved." He said, he was surprised, most women did.

"I'm a werewolf," she said, slowly jacking his cock with her hand slick with spermicidal lube, "I'm hairy." And then he laughed. She was hot and wet and her breath deep in her chest, "do you want me to shave?"

"I want you to be happy," he told her.

"I want you to press me into the mattress," she told him, "I want you to fuck my mouth, I want to ride you and use you for my pleasure, I want to," she groaned as he pinched at her labia, "I want you to eat me out, I want to," she threw her head back, "keep doing that," she groaned, "oh fuck, keep doing that." she was twisting her wrist as she jacked him and he was biting at her breasts to keep himself from coming because she smelled so good and felt better.

He was hard in her hands, as he rolled her over, "these have got to go." He said pushing her panties down and listening as she threw them to the side, "and I am going to do all of those things, but," he took a deep sucking breath of her through his nose, "I have to," and with his new position, pinning her to the bed, as she scraped and scratched at his shoulders with one hand, his cock slipped along the wetness of her labia and she used her own to move his cock into place and then used her thighs to pull him in.

She was hot and wet and tight and he howled as she pushed him down, taking what she wanted from him, her head thrown back and his face buried in the line of her throat, sucking marks unto it that he would never see, but he could hear the delighted groan she made when he touched them, as he started to roll his hips, making small experimental thrusts as she hissed delightfully. "More," she said, her claws digging into the meat of his ass, "harder, I can take it," she bit his ear and when she turned her face to him he could taste her blood in his mouth. "I want it, harder," and who was he to disagree, so he started to snap his hips down, using his feet to give him traction, doing his best to slam into her where she was tight and hot, and oh fuck, the smell of her and the noises she was making, and the wet slapping noise of his hips against hers.

He could feel the way she tightened against the base of his cock, he was going to knot her. He could feel how much more sensitive he was becoming, how tighter she was, he went to pull out, but she grabbed the back of his neck, "don't you dare," she gasped, "I want it." She wrapped her thighs about him to pull him in deeper, and started to rock, her orgasm starting as a slow undulation when she bit his lip, smearing blood over her mouth as she went silent and he came.

After when he lay across her, "I'm not going to break," she reminded him, "I like it," scratching her nails through his hair, "I'm hungry." She told him, "after this," she kissed his temple, his face was pillowed against her neck, and she was loose and floating, pinned down by his weight, "you can maybe make us something to eat."

"I'm blind, Laura," he said.

"So?" she asked, "if you burn yourself you'll learn and not do it when you try it the second time." She took a deep yawn, "I'm glad you didn't knot me on the couch," she said, "that thing's uncomfortable, as it is this will be murder on my hips," she pulled his face up for a kiss, "next time, it might be easier from behind."


	5. When your smile is so wide and your heels are so high you can't cry

Deucalion woke up in a bed that didn't smell of Laura. The sun was hot on his face and he felt grimy as he moved the quilt, handmade and trimmed in broderie anglaise - a feminine pretty thing not like anything in his apartment - out of the way and stood up, naked, stretching his muscles out. He then had a good scratch trying to remember what he could of the past few days, but as he pulled a dried leaf from his pubic hair, nothing was coming to mind. He must have lost himself in the hunt, he thought, Laura would laugh at him.

Laura.

In that instant it was like he lost her again, that for a second she was with him, just absent from the room, and then it was like she was dead all over. He hadn't known that a person could die a thousand deaths, or he could lose her a thousand times.

It felt just as fresh as it had that day in the office and he fell to his knees. Weak in the presence of it as his wolf keened within him.

He showered, washing the grime and crud and leaf matter from his skin, using a lavender scented bar of soap. Then he pulled on clothes, jeans, with the belt threaded through the loops, and a hooded sweater with a printed design of words he could feel but not read. They were not his. His cane, however, was propped up against the door and he recognised it, the one Laura had given him, with the daredevil logo on the finial. Laura's little joke to him and he lost her again as he ran his thumb over it.

Everything was Laura and she was gone.

There was carpet on the stairs, old and worn, and the wood of the bannister was warm from the afternoon sunlight. There was a bouquet of chrysanthemums in a vase at the bottom of the stairs which he bumped into where it clattered.

"Oh, you're awake," Ada McKerrit said, "as always you have excellent timing, I've just put a pot of tea on, lavender and lemon grass, I remember it's your favourite."

He was in the house of the Moirae.

"How long?" He asked her. He could hear her move, the cotton of her dress, it was probably one of those that Laura made her, because Ada hated synthetics. She had taught Laura to spin, and was responsible for the whistling clack clack of the damn spinning wheel. He had hated that thing. He would never hear it again. He felt the loss again as if he had just been told.

"Three weeks." She answered calmly. "You missed a full moon."

"Any missing tourists I should know about?" he asked her, stumbling across to the chair that she always had in front of the fire. She waited until he was sat down before she pressed the cup of tea into his hand. It smelled sugary sweet, and she always made it so carefully that it tasted like sherbet lemons, his mother's favourite candy. He had sat in this chair with his mother, and his brothers, drinking this same tea with the same old ladies.

Even if he had not been born a wolf his history with the Kindly Ones, as his mother called them, and how they had been elderly long before he was born, would have assured him of the existence of the supernatural. These three women had been there when he was born, when his brothers were alive, and they had offered his mother and her children shelter from his father.

"Actually, no." Ada said, clattering some plates, "but there was a lovely new photo of a yeti taken in the area, apparently you just glared at the hiker when he took the photo and he ran like the end of the world was on his tail." She pressed a plate into his hand, it was clear that she was feeding him. "Although there was a moose that was knocking down our fence posts that is now half way to becoming a rather nice throw rug."

"I," he stopped, "three weeks, what did I miss?"

"You're looking better," Amabel said coming in, he could hear the scratch of her wool skirt against her panty hose as she walked. She wore leather shoes that slightly squeaked when she walked and the rubber soles were almost silent against the slate floor.

"Better?" He asked. There was a growl in his voice when he spoke.

"I said, better." Amabel corrected, "not well, better suggests a slight improvement, how anything might be different in a positive manner than scaring tourists."

"I'm told it was a moose."

"Oh good, that thing was determined to get into my green house and eat my tomatoes." She said, he could hear her clunking down a cup for tea. He could hear it pouring. She had a hint of amusement in her tone. "How is your sandwich? I trust you have an appetite for something other than raw moose."

He hadn't touched it.

"It's bacon," Ada said from the left. She was fussing about, but he didn't know what she was doing. "I used avocado, I know it's your favourite."

"You don't have to baby me." He said, lifting the sandwich. Adeline made fresh bread daily and when it was gone it was gone, so the other two had a tendency to hoard it like gold. Yet the sandwich was thickly cut. He took a bite and chewed mechanically.

"You were born in this house," Amabel said quietly, "I bathed you, I changed your nappy, bairn, and you have spit up on me, and I still have the stain on one of my sweaters from that, if there are three people in this world that can baby you when you need coddling and they are in this house." She reached over and ruffled his hair, "now are you bored of this feeling sorry for yourself, because you've had three weeks of grrrr I'm the demon wolf and now I want to ask if you're ready to do what you need to in California."

"She's dead, Ama." He clutched the plate tight enough it broke in his hands.

"You were right, Ama," Ada said with a chuckle, "not to give him the good china." 

"Now," Amabel said, pulling out one of the chairs, "I can tell you what you have missed, but I want you to finish your tea and sandwich like a good boy first," Amabel never did stop talking to him like a small child. Or treating him like one, she had, the last time he had been here with Laura, wiped at his face with a wet wipe over a smear of blood left over from the hunt. She had pulled an ugly sweater, and all the ones Amabel knitted were cable work and complicated stitches that made them thick and heavy and as ugly as the ones from Starsky and Hutch. Ada and Adeline were much more distant but Amabel had been mother to him when he was a fifteen year old alpha without a family or a pack after his father.

She had done the same for that traitor, Derek Hale.

She picked up her knitting. She was never far from at least one set of needles and the rapid clicking was as reassuring from her as it was from Laura. Except she knitted much, much faster than Laura had. 

"Laura was murdered by another wolf," Amabel said in a low quiet voice. "She didn't stand much of a chance, but it wasn't Derek." She said it firmly, "I can see why they thought it was, but he's still a beta, if he'd killed her he'd be an alpha." That was basic, he had become an alpha when he killed his father. "There is a rogue in Beacon Hills, your Ennis doesn't know who it is, only that he bit a kid and has been chasing him down, Derek stood between the alpha and the kid."

"So derek's dead too?" Deucalion asked. He didn't want the sandwich but he knew he would never hear the end of it if he didn't eat it. Amabel was mothering in that way too.

"Actually no," Ada answered, "which is good, he's such a sweet boy." Ada always liked kids that could rip her throat out. The more sociopathic the more likely she was to become maternal. 

"Ennis patched him back together and your Kali," Amabel sneered out that name, she had never liked Kali but Deucalion didn't know why. "She took his memories as a just in case, she took everything about you, her, Ennis, I do not know why you trust her with such things, she has the subtlety of a wrecking ball." She was pursing her lips together in disapproval. Deucalion knew her well enough to know that.

"I trust Ennis and Kali haven't killed the rogue, his head is mine." He growled. 

"It is the start of things." Ada agreed. "Derek should return here, but he won't, not now, he has rediscovered his mate," she said it calmly, "although Kali claims she has taken from him the knowledge of what the scent means. She said it was so Derek could not use it against her and Ennis." Ada wasn't keen on Kali either. Adeline flat out hated her.

"Tell Kali that she is not to harm the mate, at all. If she does I will flay her and give you her pelt as a throw rug to lie next to the moose." 

Amabel snorted. "It is a boy." She said, "so strange that the wolf chooses such, but the threads snarl where they will. The nemeton is becoming active again." The dark undercurrent of hate was almost palpable. "Would you be our champion, Deucalion, and destroy the thing?"

"What is in it for me?"

"Do you know," Adeline said from the corner, he had not known she was there, she had been so silent and still, "why Laura and Derek survived the fire?" 

"They weren't there." He blurted the words out. "They were at the school."

"They had mates, those knots on their threads tugged them from the machinations of the nemeton, that is tugging the threads back into place, that is why there is a rogue alpha, that is why Laura died. Destroy the nemeton and the threads will slide back into place." She said it calmly.

"I don't understand. Speak plainly for once." He told her.

"You are mated to Laura," Amabel said, putting down her knitting, "fulfil the conditions needed to destroy the nemeton and she can be brought back."

"She's dead." He protested, repeating the information.

"And when has that ever stopped us, if the threads are snarled they can be manipulated, because they were never truly severed. A mate can bring the dead back, there are things that can be done to bring her back, but not whilst the nemeton stands." Adeline's voice was calm and even where she spoke from the dark.

"A lunar year." Ada said, "destroy it in a lunar year and we can bring her back, you forget, love," she said softly, "we loved her too."

Amabel took a deep sigh, "but we cannot save the child."

Deucalion broke again, shattered all over the chair where he sat and their domestic little kitchen. "She was pregnant?" he asked. They had spoken of it, once or twice, mentioned it was something for later.

"You didn't know." Ada said, "Ama, open the door, go, Duke," she used Laura's little fond name for him, "come back at nightfall when your wolf is less angry, someone will be here to drive you to California."

Deucalion stood up and pulled the sweater up over his head, the wolf needed to run, to lose itself, his mate had been with child. There was an alpha in California that would suffer and burn and he'd destroy the world to avenge her.

\---

The car was as quiet as a cloud, even to werewolf ears, with soft leather upholstery and the lingering scent of Laura in the fabric and linings. She was the one who used it most often, their Manhattan apartment was walking distance to his office, so, unlike every American in the city he felt, he walked, but Laura used the car to get around the island. She used it to get around the fabric stores and yarn stockists she used for her work, when she shopped just because, and when she took him to dinner. He always half expected some of her cinnamon gum to be in the ash trays, gathered in the wrappers, and cast out from where she had chewed them.

The car would never again smell of her. It should have had her moving around the city, swelling and ripe with their child, the heart of her beating for the two of them, as she made silly fripperies for the child, one that would have her bright eyes and maybe his sandy hair. He growled low in his throat with the hate of it, the hate of what they had taken from him. He would never lie again with his nose against the mole behind her ear, and the smell of her hair, and the idea of a child that would swell her breasts with milk, and sweeten her scent, and would pad across their wooden floor with tiny feet in socks she had made it, and suck on it's thumb and call him papa, a child that he could raise without the violence and blood of his own upbringing. One that was now gone.

They had taken his Mate from him, his child, his immortality. The Moirae suggested that the Nemeton was responsible, he did not know how something so simple as a tree stump could be responsible, there was a rogue behind this and that would be made to pay.

"Deucalion?" Ethan asked from the front seat, he and his brother drove the car, Laura teased them, and they seemed to shine under her the way that everyone did. "You are growling." Ethan was softer than his brother, but both were good soldiers. It had been a long time since he had thought of either of them as any thing other than soldiers. 

He had a pack made of bounds of power, but Laura had been Pack. She had been Mate and Matriarch and Mother and Lover and Goddess and Confidante, all the things that made up Pack. It had been such a long time since he had had family, but then he had found Laura, and he hadn't needed family.

She had tried to give him one anyway and someone had taken her from him.

She had given him light and laughter and love, and she was going to give him a child and she brought him her brother who was young and broken and vulnerable and, he frowned to himself, Derek was just a kid, but he had been as much brother to Deucalion as he had to Laura, given as much of himself as he could, broken as he was, and Laura's death had taken that too, because Kali had stripped Derek from them. No, he corrected himself, they had taken him from Derek.

Maybe the child would have had hair as dark as Laura's.

"I am tired." He said, "do not presume to question me."

"Yes, Alpha," Ethan said then, "would you like me to raise the screen?"

"Yes." Deucalion said, "I'm going to attempt to sleep, you and your brother can play your music, it won't disturb me." He fussed about in his pocket for his mp3, a simple thing with only a few buttons that Derek had bought him. He fumbled the buds into his ears and pushed play, it was not quite enough to drown out the world, but it made it easier.

Laura had recorded this for him, lamenting that she was too busy to read to him the way that he wanted, and it was another thing that they had taken from him, lying on the couch with her in his arms as she read to him from whatever it was she was reading. Her voice filled his ears, amused and somewhat smug, recorded on her computer, with the screen there, whilst she worked with her hands. He could hear the click click of her needles.

"Hardly breathing, he went up to the dressing-room and, with his ear to the door to catch her reply, prepared to knock. But his hand dropped. He had heard A MAN'S VOICE in the dressing-room, saying, in a curiously masterful tone:

"Christine, you must love me!"

And Christine's voice, infinitely sad and trembling, as though accompanied by tears, replied:

"How can you talk like that? WHEN I SING ONLY FOR YOU!"

Raoul leaned against the panel to ease his pain. His heart, which had seemed gone for ever, returned to his breast and was throbbing loudly. The whole passage echoed with its beating and Raoul's ears were deafened. Surely, if his heart continued to make such a noise, they would hear it inside, they would open the door and the young man would be turned away in disgrace. What a position for a Chagny! To be caught listening behind a door! He took his heart in his two hands to make it stop.

The man's voice spoke again: "Are you very tired?"

"Oh, to-night I gave you my soul and I am dead!" Christine replied.

"Your soul is a beautiful thing, child," replied the grave man's voice, "and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. THE ANGELS WEPT TONIGHT."

The angels would not mourn the death of a werewolf, Deucalion thought to himself as Raoul continued eavesdropping on the now empty room in a room in the Paris Opera House a hundred years ago, they would not mourn his Laura, no angels would weep for his Laura.

\---

The restaurant was in Nebraska, the twins, even with sharing driving needed a break and sitting in the back doing nothing but listening to Laura and mourning her and the child that should have been was exhausting. Just into Nebraska and Deucalion told them they'd stop for the night.

The woman sat at the bar drinking Scotch, she was wearing a perfume heavy with plums and carnations, and that was all it took to sit next to her, to try and breathe her in as he ordered the best scotch that they had.

He wondered briefly if she was a prostitute but she made no move to talk to him, or acknowledge him. He might have felt worse about what he was going to do if she had. "Your perfume is exquisite," he told her.

"I'm not interested." She said.

"Me either." He admitted. "I am on my way to California." He drained the glass and put it back on the counter, "my wife was murdered, I have to."

"I'm sorry." She said but there was no inflection in her voice, she said it by rote. "Another," she put her glass down, and he heard the bartender fill her glass. Deucalion caught his attention, something that had been easier to do with a glance than it was now, and then just cupped his hand around the glass.

"You didn't kill her." He said quietly, "so your apology is moot, you don't need to apologise for something you didn't do, and you're not sorry to hear it, you don't care." His tone remained even, "but you didn't know her, you just know I'm talking to you for two reasons, one- you're there, and two- you wear the same perfume."

"It's Opium." She answered, she reached down and lifted her purse, putting something heavy and glass on it, "now you don't need to talk to me. I am sorry about your wife, because that shouldn't happen to anyone, but please, leave me alone. I came in here to drink myself stupid and go upstairs to a hotel room and sleep, I don't want your sympathy or your conversation."

He snorted out a laugh. "Bartender," he said, making the decision there and then not to kill her. "The Oban, bring the bottle for me and the Lady," he tilted his head towards her. "If I sit next to you no one will talk to you, and then no one will talk to me, and we can drink the best Scotch the bar has to offer."

"I'm not going to fuck you." She said bluntly.

"I love my wife dearly," Deucalion said, "I never wanted that, I just..." he sighed. "I just wanted to talk someone who didn't know her, who wore the same scent."

"I'm Alisha," she said.

He nodded, "Duke."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The passage in the middle is from "The Phantom of the Opera" by Gaston Leroux, this is important and Laura is going to read the book to him at different times, if you've never read it's not the book you think it is and is available on project gutenberg  
> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/175/175-h/175-h.htm
> 
> The perfume Alisha is wearing is Opium by Yves Saint Laurent, but Laura's scent is based on Bathsheba by Blackphoenixalchemylab  
> I use them or all my werewolf scenting needs
> 
> I've introduced the start of Sterek and the very observant amongst you will notice that this takes it up to "Night School"  
> the next chapter however will be the Hale Fire.
> 
> Oban is a high end Scotch, for a 70cl bottle it's about $70, for a cheap one, for a numbered year it's about $100, for a good years $500 - sharing the bottle with her is an extravagance. We're talking easily a $30 a glass Scotch.


	6. Put your glad rags on and let's sing along to that lonely song

Feb 2005

Deucalion was listening to an audio novel when the phone rang, he fumbled about with his mp3, despite Lupe's recommendation he simply could not work the apple thing she had purchased him and used a blockier, heavier one that had buttons and came in a leather case. Lupe teased him softly when she charged and loaded it, she had got him a subscription to some online company and bought him the most popular book on their site, or one she had read favourable reviews of. This had been the legacy of Laura, after their two weeks in the Hale cabin, she had asked about his hobbies and when she had learned that he loved to read she had found books, the books she needed to read for class and others, and read them to him.

After that the idea of finding books on tape, as he had called them, seemed an obvious link. He liked crime novels and was listening to the short stories of Dashiell Hammett when the phone had rung, completely ruining his evening.

He didn't expect Laura to have phoned him, she never phoned on a Monday because she had soccer, and her brother, Derek, had another school club, and for some reason it meant they wouldn't get home until gone seven. It was barely eight there now, and it was a full moon, so their control was tight at the best of times, little Evangeline would still be locked in the cellar with Talia, so it wouldn't be Laura and no one else would bother him on a full moon when they knew he had a date with Sam Spade.

He answered the phone, a blackberry with a braille sticker on the back with his pass-code written on it - another gift from Lupe - "Volkov." It wasn't Laura, it couldn't be Laura, so he answered with his gruff business voice - his Sam Spade voice.

"This is Deputy Stilinski of the Beacon Hills Sheriff's department, I was hoping to speak to Deucalion Volkov." Deucalion's heart rose in his throat like gorge. "I have Laura and Derek here," he started to breathe again, if Laura had done something it was possible she would have asked them to phone him so he could bail them out - "there's been a terrible accident, and," the deputy stopped.

"Go on," Deucalion said, his mp3 player splinters in his hand. "I."

"There's been a fire." He said, he paused then, clearly looking for the words. "Laura asked us to phone you on her behalf, the fire, the firefighters are doing their best, but it doesn't look good, and Laura wanted someone to phone you, I'm with her, she's sat in the ambulance now with her brother, they're in shock." 

"How bad?" Deucalion asked. "Is anyone hurt?"

"We've just taken Peter Hale to Beacon Hills Memorial, but it doesn't look good. There doesn't appear to be any way someone survived it, Laura and Derek were very lucky that they were at school. Laura said that you'd know what to do."

"I don't know, deputy," Deucalion said his heart in two places, grief for Laura and relief for Laura and he didn't know what he was supposed to.

"If you did you'd be the only one of us." The Deputy admitted in something of a broken voice, "I've got two kids here who have just lost everything and their only adult is in critical condition and the only thing either of them seemed to know to do is give me their cell to call you."

Deucalion took a deep breath. "There is a woman in Beacon Hills," he said, "called Marin Morell, she's a mutual friend of the Hales and I, call her, she'll take the two of them in whilst I arrange things. Deputy, Laura's eighteen now and they can finish High School here in New York state, in a minute pass the phone over to her, and call Morell, I have a house in Oppenheim with family, they can finish school there, but I don't feel safe just sending them tickets to come here, so I'm going to send a car for them."

"Can you come?" the deputy asked.

"I can't fly," Deucalion answered. No werewolf flew unless they were heavily sedated and forced to by their alpha, it was torture, enclosed in recycled air with the stink of a hundred humans and the whine of the engines. It was a slaughter just waiting to happen. "Ear condition, and I can't just drive down, but I'll be there as soon as I can with a driver. Do you need funds to put them in a hotel?" The deputy murmured something. "I'll wire Morell some money. I am a very close friend of the Hale family, deputy, and Morell will, I hope, know what to do better than I do, but I can't let them stay there, you understand that, don't you?"

"They're just kids, Mr Volkov."

"Give the phone to Laura," Deucalion said, putting a thread of alpha power in his voice. Fuck, he thought, this human was trying hard to keep it together when he was at the site of a house fire that had clearly killed over ten people, even with human senses he could probably smell it, and all he wanted to do was protect these two kids.

"Lola," he said softly when he heard her breath over the handset, he didn't use the name often, "Lola, love, talk to me." And the sob ripped itself out of her, the words falling over each other as all the way over the country he tried to soothe the two of them.

\---

He had to hire a driver, one from a company prized on it's discretion, to drive him to Beacon Hills to collect them. He had Derek and Laura on speakerphone for most of the journey, and the driver closed off from them with a screen. When he got there Laura wrapped herself around him, still holding Derek by the hand. Their scent was bitter with pain and it tried to tear him in two. He couldn't hold the two of them tight enough, and all three of them fell to their knees in the hallway of Marin's house. He just tried to enfold them in his arms, like a mother with her cubs. Nuzzling into their hair with the tip of his nose, and making vocalising growls to soothe them.

There was the lingering smell of fire upon them, burned wood, artificial fibres melted into nothing and a smell he could only recognise as burned pork, he could smell it in their hair and on their skin, under the hints of detergent and Marin's expensive soaps. She had dressed them, their clothes had the smell of many people still, so they were new, but he could smell their tears and their skin, young and sweet. 

He just knelt there with them, rocking back and forth and making soothing growls deep in his throat like a mama wolf would with her cubs. "They are in the bedroom on the left." Marin said, she was holding coffee, freshly ground and expensive beans. "If you want to take them there, I made a nest with the blankets for them."

She turned back to where she had been, and closed the door behind her. She was an emissary, she knew better than to interfere with the easing of pain amongst wolves. When he had gathered the other alphas into his pack, when they had slaughtered their packs he had chosen only Marin to live because Marin was the most distant from her pack, she was from an old line and he knew better than to trust her, for after all she was an emissary - pack only through choice and she could choose to betray. He had asked her to protect them, not her brother who was their emissary, because she was certainly more trustworthy than he was.

The blankets were soft, actual fur coats, some of which were very old, and synthetic fleeces as he led them to the bed. It was not sexual, not in any way, for all Laura was his mate and he loved her and he desired her, and Derek was pack, but it was about soothing cubs, it was about Pack and what they had lost and what he could offer them, which was not much, but it was all that he had to give.

\---

The house of the Moirae was one of those strange old buildings that seemed much larger on the inside than it was on the outside. The three of them always shrugged it off with clever architecture but when Deucalion was a child he had made a point of trying to map the house, to find it's secrets but had given up when he decided, although no one ever agreed it was the case, that sometimes things moved, like doorways and rooms, and the bathrooms.

Deucalion woke up and his left side was cold. He had gone to bed sandwiched between the Hales because they needed him. He had, of course, had the thought about keeping them both, Laura was beautiful, and the last time he had seen Derek he had been a strange mishmash of handsome man and beautiful child, yet to grow into his hands, feet and ears with a monobrow that would become strong line over his face. If he had either of his parent's cheekbones he would be a very attractive man and with both of them clinging to him like baby monkeys he would have had to be dead not to consider it. But they were broken, Derek more than Laura and Amabel had just hugged him and told him to let it be, to them them be what they needed to be, and if that meant clinging to him as Pack, then he would cling to them as Pack.

He had cornered Deucalion and told him to take care of his sister, or else. He had not taken him seriously, of course, he had been a fifteen year old boy, a beta wolf, all hair and acne.

They were pups and pups were to be cherished.

Yet when he woke up in the wide bed in the McKerrit house Derek was not there.

He wanted to get up, to check on the pup, but Laura was draped over him, smelling of burned meat and bitter sadness in her sleep, and he didn't want to move, because she was there, broken but there, and Talia couldn't come between them any more.

He was alpha and she was alpha and she was there, in New York, and she was beautiful and she needed him.

When he concentrated he could hear Derek outside, talking in a low voice to someone, he wondered for a second if it was Ada, as she was the most maternal of the three, but when the other person spoke he realised it was Adeline.

Adeline was the most aloof of the sisters, she rose with the moon and went to bed with the sun, she drank gin and wound the yarn that Ada made around a wooden thing called a swift, and dressed like the star of Sunset Boulevard, in a kaftan and a turban and heavy clacking beads. She hated people, and only like Bombay Sapphire gin and the quiet of night time. 

As a child Deucalion had been mostly convinced that she was a Disney villain.

If she was talking to Derek willingly, and it did sound like she was, there must have been a reason.

He started to comb his fingers through Laura's hair, thinking as he did, wondering what Adeline might have to talk about with Derek, and he could hear her bark of laughter. They must have been in the conservatory, the February air was cold and sharp in New York, so clearly Adeline was using the room instead of sitting on the verandah, she probably had a fire in the grate, and Deucalion made a displeased noise. 

"Duke," Laura murmured with her cheek against his pectoral, his tee shirt had been pulled up so she was touching skin, her left hand was slipped under the waist band of his sweats, so her fingers were lingering against the skin of his adam's girdle. It wasn't a sexual touch, but reassuring. "Whass'wrong?" her voice was slurred with sleep. 

"Derek's not in the bed," he said.

"Is he?" she stopped, waking up and listening, "he's with one of them," he said, "is okay."

"Adeline," Deucalion corrected her, "he's with Adeline." He dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

"I didn't meet that one." She said, "she left me gin slings for breakfast yesterday." He stopped, "you said they were safe. You said we were safe here. Are we safe here?"

"They're the safest." He agreed.

"Duke?" she asked, drunk with sleep, "Amabel, she said we were going to live here. Are we?"

"The school here is better." He said, "and this is Chastel territory, I have a treaty with them, and the Hunter Council, and even if I didn't no one would move against the McKerrits." He stroked her hair over the curve of her jaw, "not even the Argents."

"Why don't you have a Pack, Duke?" she asked, nosing at his nipple as she turned her head up to look at him.

"I have you and Derek," he answered. He could feel her staring at him. She had her mother's flat look, and he didn't need to see to know that. "I'm part of an Alpha pack."

She was silent for a long moment. "Good," she said. "I can't get Derek to talk to me, I think the Argents started the fire, and I think that they used him to do it, and he won't tell me. I need to protect my brother, love," she said, "but burn them, burn them all."

"I can't." He said into her hair. "As much as I want to we can't act against them without proof, so we wait and we watch. Apparently we have a bias, the council will not tolerate that. There is another pack who watches the Argents."

"That's bullshit." She growled, he could feel the Alpha in her rise. His own rose to match it.

"I agree, my love." He told her, his mouth full of fangs. "I want to destroy them for what they did to you, I want to tear that old fucker into meat and mess, I want to braid his intestines into a crown for you to wear and watch his blood drip down your chin, I want to give you his heart, but without evidence an Alpha Pack is just a murderer. The code protects both the wolves and the hunters, each can misstep." He stopped.

"Did your mother tell you about the hunters?" he asked.

"She taught us that if we obeyed the code that we should be safe but men were not to be trusted. That we were to be careful of anyone who was not pack, and we were to listen to our wolves because they understood better than we did." 

He was stroking his hand down the line of her arm. "And she was right." He said. "Do you know the code?"

"We hunt those who hunt us." She said.

"No," he said, "that's the Argent motto. The Code, the one that the true hunters subscribe to is "do not harm where telling is enough, do not maim where harm is enough, do not kill where maiming is enough, and do not be afraid to cut. That is the code." His voice was even, "but they forget, they think that picking up a rifle is enough, that is where the Council comes in, that is why the Council has Alpha Packs, we hunt those who hunt us. That is our code. We watch, we wait and when the time comes we lay waste." 

"I know they did it." She said, throwing her leg over his, "they killed my pack and they killed my sisters, even little Evie, she was seven years old, they burned down the house and I want them to burn."

"We will watch," he said, "we will wait, and when the time comes, we will kill them all, from the oldest man to the youngest child and we will do so that their name will be struck from the hunting accords, where they will be a warning for other hunting families. You heard of the De Feo, didn't you?"

She nodded, he could feel it against his chest. "They broke the code, they were destroyed, the Chastels took over their territory. The Argents are being watched, that is all we can do for now." He wanted to destroy, to slaughter in her name, but he couldn't. "Once hunters were part of packs, they were honoured, humans raised to remind us that we were human too and none could rise so high that they could not be cut down, and those who did were honoured for protecting the packs, it changed." His voice was sonorous, "both forgot, the hunters became envious and angry and the packs became scared and hidden. The world changed, Lola, and both lost so much in the change." He sighed, "now there are hunters and wolves and they are no longer the same, and only those without pack can be Alpha Pack, can hunt the hunters. We watch, and we wait, and we lay waste. When we have proof, when we know for sure, we'll destroy them, and your family's honour will be restored in blood."


	7. You're the train that crashed my heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah this one is shorter but it didn't wanna happen, sorry, and I was happy with where I left it

February 2011

There was a busy amount of noise in the Beacon Hills Sheriff's Station. Deucalion had walked there from the diner where the twins had dropped him off. He liked the way the town smelled, fresh and crisp from the pines in the preserve and the sharp smell of freshly mown grass on the lawn around the building. He was careful on the stairs, six of them, but most people rather than offer him help made sure to stay clear out of his way. No one held open a door for him. He made exaggerated fumblings to see if any one would even notice but they were clearly studiously ignoring him.

He bumped into the counter, "I have an appointment with the Sheriff," he said, steadying himself against it, his cane pressed against the wood. The receptionist didn't answer. "Excuse me." He said a touch louder, "I have an appointment."

The woman moved. He got the scent of bologna from her desk, she was either working through lunch or just plain rude, he was leaning towards the latter. "If you want to sit over there." She made a gesture that he could hear, "he's at lunch with his son, you're a bit early." 

Deucalion knew he was early, it was a point of pride that he was early for most things whenever possible, however this woman was determined to have her throat ripped out with the way that she was treating him.

"I'm sorry," he said sounding not at all sorry, "I know I'm early, I was raised to think it was polite to be early, I expected to wait." His voice was like steel, "but I will need your help to go wherever it is you want me to sit."

"What are you, blind?" the woman said putting her cell phone down.

"Yes, actually," he said, "I thought the dark glasses and cane were something of a give away, but pardon me, my assumptions meant you had to be paying attention to something other than candy crush."

The new smell had hints of wolf but was something oaky, hints of light musk and vanillin, with a lingering top note of lavender, and mixed with it was the sun warmed leather that was so unique to Derek, and the hint of burned apricot sweetness. "Is something the matter?" the boy asked, he had a softer voice than Deucalion had expected, and moved in the rustle of synthetic fabrics and denim, his footfalls cushioned by rubber. This was Derek's mate, he thought, one that he had never intended to meet.

"No, Stiles." The woman said bluntly, "This gentleman has an appointment with the sheriff I was just explaining that he had to wait."

"Actually," Deucalion corrected, "I would like to leave a complaint about my treatment by your receptionist after my appointment."

The boy tutted disapprovingly, "I'll take you back to my dad," he said, "you have to be careful, this lot leave their stuff everywhere, there are always trash cans in the way. They're a terrible lot," he said that with fondness, "but our usual receptionist is off at the moment, she's having a baby, and so we have a temp, you're not the first to run afoul of her today." He stopped, "do you want me to take your hand, or?" 

"Thank you," Deucalion said holding out his cane for the boy to lead him. 

"I'm Stiles, watch out, Hensen's desk sticks out a bit here." He led him quickly, pointing out only the worst of the obstacles. He pushed open the door, "hey, dad, I've got your two o'clock."

There was the creak of a chair and there was the smell of the sheriff, the veggie burgers he had just eaten with egg free mayonaise, the sweet potato fries with a little too much salt. Then the smells of his office, stale cordite and mineral oil, the same Irish Spring soap as his son, before those scents which were his own, thyme, sage and something of old meat, dried and salted and old wood, the overlay of his son's brighter scent. "Mr Volkov," there was a rustling of paper, perhaps a napkin being scrunched and shoved into a bin, "if you could just give me a moment."

"I know, Dad," the boy said, "but someone else ran afoul of Adele the terrible temp." He said it with a bit of venom, "I thought I'd bring him back here so I'd catch you eating the jerky in your desk that I'm not supposed to know about."

"Yes, well," the sheriff said, "you didn't catch me. Now if you want to get back home, being grounded is no big deal, I'm sure Mr Volkov is very grateful for your help, but..."

There was a laugh in the boy's voice as he answered, "see you later, love you, Dad." Before he closed the door. There was a shamelessness in the boy's love.

"My son is a good boy," The sheriff said, "but he is a little over protective." He sat back down, "the chair is to your left, I hope Stiles wasn't too fussy."

"He may have saved your temp from a tongue lashing." Deucalion sat carefully, using the arms of his chair to guide him. "She decided her level on candy crush was more important than helping me, and then asked if I was blind."

The sheriff made a disapproving noise. "She'll be gone as soon as this interview is over, she's the third temp this week and it's only Saturday. Most of them think that because they are not guaranteed a permanent job that they don't have to actually work, I doubt they realise that the reason that they don't get permanent jobs is because they don't work." He said it with the exasperation of someone who had suffered this a lot. 

"I must admit that I work without my assistant when she's not available, I may be like a bear with a sore head but it takes too long to break in a good assistant rather than put up with the problem of not answering my own phones." He offered it as conversation as they danced around the topic. 

"I'm very sorry, about your wife." The Sheriff said, and there was not a word of lie about it, "and I'm sorry we have to do this."

Deucalion exhaled a breath he had not realised that he had been holding. "Soonest done." He said, with a slight shrug. He didn't want to discuss this, he wanted to crawl into bed beside Laura and be told it was all a horrible dream and he was being silly, she was an alpha werewolf, she wouldnt die easy - but she had.

"There is the money," the Sheriff said, "I've checked your alibi and getting videoed thwarting a robbery will hold up in any court, but Laura was a very wealthy young woman, now your legal team have proven that you were not a beneficiary, did you know that?"

"Yes," Deucalion said, "in fact I insisted on it, we had a pre-nuptial agreement that gave me no right to her money. We did share a checking account but it was just a small fraction of either of our collective wealth, just enough that we had money, our bills were paid by our legal team and accountants." He could hear the sheriff scribbling that down before he spoke again.

"As it stands, her brother Derek was the sole beneficiary, was he in a situation, to the best of your knowledge, where he might need the money?" These were almost pro-forma questions.

"No, and Derek adored his sister, and his fiscal situation was about the same as hers, they both inherited from the tragedy of their parents, both of them invested it with the same broker, and Derek knew if he needed money we were both there for him, but he didn't even use what he had. He hated it, in fact, he tried to work his way through college until Laura found out and paid for his tuition in full. The only thing I can think of." He stopped, deliberately, "no, it wouldn't matter."

"Any thing can help." The sheriff said, not realising the grieving man in front of him might be leading him.

"Laura," he stopped, "she was investigating the fire, she was convinced it was arson."

"I'm not entirely unconvinced myself." The sheriff added.

"She found this," he handed the sheriff an envelope from his pocket, "I'm wondering if it might not have been the person who set the fire who did it, to hide their tracks." He stopped, "her family had a feud with another one, going back to the gold rush and beyond, they have a history of shady dealing with the Hales, I mean it was real Hatfield and McCoy stuff." He could hear the sheriff writing, "It's just, I'm told that they're back in town, and then Laura gets the call about some people around her uncle and so she comes to check on him, and she gets killed. I'm sure it's probably connected." He licked his lips, making sure to look like he was concerned and perhaps a little guilty for what he was saying. "I know Derek was certain they were behind the fire, but there wasn't any proof, and sixteen year olds are excitable."

The sheriff murmured something that sounded like "tell me about it" under his breath. So Derek's mate, the sheriff's son, was sixteen. He had to remember that. It certainly made life interesting. He remembered the Chinese curse, the one Laura was so fond of, may you live in interesting times. These were certainly that.

"Do you have a name? I can look into it."

"Argent." Deucalion said. "The family has been making inroads for years for the state to seize the house, we've been blocking it, but it turns out that they are behind all the complaints, even though they didn't live in state. Then they start listening because the Argents moved to town, but it doesn't matter anyway."

"Why not?" The sheriff asked. 

"Because the house is on a separate deed to the land, it was part of the original agreement to build the house on the preserve. The Hales own the preserve, right up to and into a huge swathe of the national park, they've always held the land in trust like that, but when they built the house the Argents tried to block them and get the land contested. So the house was built on a leasehold so even if the county does seize it they don't get the land, and they can't do anything other than demolish it." Deucalion had made sure he understood the legalities of this, he didn't want the sheriff to investigate and find out it wasn't true.

"Interesting, any idea why they wanted the land?" The sheriff, Deucalion was pleased to note, was asking all the right questions.

"Silver deposits, and some gold, Laura said. But I think after all these years it's like their family mission, but they do have a history of using violence to get what they want. They had a cousin in Missouri who is in prison for murdering someone, he used a dog to do the killing bite, trained the thing, a wolf-dog hybrid, great big thing, I remember Laura telling me about it, just before she came here, she was really worried about her uncle."

"Did you have a name for the cousin?"

"Not off hand," Deucalion told him, "however my legal team would be more than happy to offer any help that they could, I want nothing more than to bring Laura's murderers to justice."

"It might just be a supposition at this point." The sheriff said.

"Anything I can do to help," Deucalion told him, secure in the knowledge that there were few people on this earth easier to manipulate than a good man who was good at his job.


	8. You're the glitter in the dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> October 2005

Oct 2005

For the first two months after the fire Deucalion worked from the house in Oppenheim, working more closely with Sarah Blake who had always lived upstate. He did a lot of work on the Asou collection of spirit cameras and made sure he was always available if Laura or Derek needed him. They went to school at the local High School, Laura in her senior year and Derek as a sophomore and he welcomed them back in the afternoon. The McKerrits seemed delighted to have young people in the house and Deucalion wasn't sure they weren't planning to eat them. You never knew, especially with Adeline.

Adeline and Derek were the closest. He would nap in the early afternoon when he got back and then spend most of the evening talking to her in low voices in the conservatory.

After two months he had to go back to New York, he couldn't meet with clients this far up state and work simply couldn't be put on hold any longer. He hired a full time driver and made the run out to Oppenheim every weekend on a Thursday evening, getting in just in time for supper, then a shower, then he crawled into bed with Laura. Derek had gotten his own room a week into their stay. He was always there for their full moons. 

The first one after the fire, that February, the Snow Moon, Derek had asked to be chained up, but Deucalion had put his hand on his arm and said "there's no one here to hurt, and I wouldn't let you." And the boy had taken a deep breath and shifted, and then Laura shifted, just to her beta form, she hadn't learned about her alpha form then, and Deucalion shifted to his. Laura had laughed, the first time she had since the fire, a chuffing noise, "you look like a gargoyle," she said and then kissed Deucalion's forehead, before kicking off her boots and running. Deucalion had been so surprised he'd simply stood there, barefoot on the hard frozen ground, before Derek laughed, a scared sound almost hysterical, before he ran too. Deucalion had never seen his own demon wolf form, but he had seen his father's, so he supposed it was true, he did look like a gargoyle, so he roared, a sound full of laughter, before he ran with them.

The summer was hard, Laura graduated in Oppenheim and Deucalion and the McKerrits were there, but prom was something she hadn't been able to do, for all that the McKerrits had made her a dress and told her how beautiful she looked she broke down as they were taking her photograph, because she missed her Mom and Deucalion, who hadn't been her date - she had been attending with her brother, had sat in their old fashioned Victorian sitting room, in her gown, and held her whilst she keened in his arms, wolfed out and beautiful to him 

She started at The New School in late August, moving herself into Deucalion's Manhattan apartment without even asking him. He didn't care, no, he corrected himself, he loved it, because it meant his den, his safe space started to smell like her. She turned one of the spare bedrooms into a place for Derek, with new furniture, and the other into her work room. Ostensibly she was studying fashion but she was more interested in fabric art, but the best courses for that were at The New School and although they did art and they did textiles they didn't combine the two. Laura could dress make and design and could, she told him, do all manner of complicated techniques so a lot of the classes were wasted on her, and even if they weren't she whined that the McKerrits had better techniques.

That cold wet day in October Laura was late home, and Deucalion was on the phone to Japan. The Asou collection had been renamed the Asshole collection by Sarah and with good reason. A single item from the collection was, to interested Spiritualist collectors, worth five figures, six if it still worked. Their factor in Tokyo, Okiura, had been working with a man called Mutoh who apparently had a lead on the "flash light" which apparently showed ghosts in it's beams. It mustn't have been a success because for a man who made over ten radios and six cameras once he worked out a way to make them work, so the flash light must have been a bust. However Mutoh wanted a large payment to give up the name of the man who apparently had the flash light, and although a small endowment was normal, what he was asking for was just stupid.

Laura opened the apartment, kicked off her shoes in the direction of the shoe tree, which was an improvement, and slammed her portfolio down, she pulled off her coat, one she had made herself and was proud of, and made a huffing noise as she hung it up. She must have noticed that he was on the phone because she made more huffing noises as she went into the bedroom and he could hear the shower starting.

When the call with Okiura ended, with the insistence that he stick to the base line with Mutoh, the same fee for the information as everyone else got, with a bonus if it turned into a sale, he fumbled the phone unto the table, as Laura came out of the bedroom. She smelled warm and with the hint of her tea tree and mint shower gel. "Lola?" he asked. He only used her pet name when she needed the reassurance, he got the impression it was one of those days. He had expected her back an hour since. 

She walked over, her skin still damp from her shower and was wearing an over sized tee, panties and nothing else, with her wet hair twisted into a braid that left a wet spot on the fabric, before climbing on top of him to curl her face into the line of his neck. "Just," she said. 

"Talk to me," he said, his hand making soothing gestures down the line of her spine, stroking her like she were a cat. 

"One of those days," she said with a low sigh that ghosted along the line of her jaw. "I wasn't even out of the car when I broke my heel, I swear I snapped my ankle, but Morrison," their driver, "was there to catch me, I don't think he heard it break, but I was running late and I was just glad I had my gym bag with me." Laura kept meaning to join a gym, she had everything gathered in a bag, but she hadn't actually joined one yet, "so I had sneakers. So I had to spend the morning in sneakers, at one of the foremost institutions to study fashion in the world, I've got a ratty old pair of yoga slippers on." He knew that wasn't it. "And then Max," she'd talked about Max before, she considered him a friend, "asked me out." Deucalion growled, he couldn't help himself, Laura was his mate. "So I turned him down." As she should have, Deucalion thought to himself but would never say out loud. "And he was this total asshole about it, about how he'd spent weeks being nice to me to get friend zoned." Deucalion winced, he supposed the good news was that Laura wasn't being indicted for murder - he would have paid her bail though, without a second thought. If she phoned him looking for help to hide the body he would have been there and considered it his civic duty even if he hadn't loved her as fiercely as he did. 

"So I ripped him a new one." She said, "girls aren't slot machines you put niceness in to get sex out, and apparently I was to have good luck finding another straight man." Deucalion smiled to himself, "so I explained to him that not only was I not interested in him as anything other than a friend, and I wasn't even interested in that any more now I knew what kind of person he was, an asshole, but I was in a long term significant relationship and I was happy, so fuck him." The way she said it he got the impression that there was more. "And the dean of the college was stood behind me all the while that this was going on. I could have died of embarrassment."

"You were in the right." Deucalion told her.

"That's what the Dean said, but, still, I made a huge spectacle, and then I went into class and she announced the theme of our project for the rest of the semester and it's fire, except for you Laura, you can do Earth. And Chantelle is why does Laura get a different theme, muttering away about special treatment, and Max, obviously trying to make up for the fact that he's a raging asshole who got his ass handed to him in front of the dean said, oh didn't you know, Laura got her money to go here after a house fire killed eleven people."

"He didn't." Deucalion said, wondering how long it would take his people to find this Max and obliterate him. 

"I got up and walked out." She said, "called Morrison, got him to pick me up and went to the Met and just wandered around until they threw me out for closing. I got some of their photo books for the collection, but I just couldn't be there any more, and just before then I had spent twenty minutes explaining to Derek that he was going to college come hell or high water, and then.... asshole." 

"Do you want me to," she cut him off with a finger to his lips. 

"Unless you were going to use your impressive legal team to make his life difficult I don't want to hear it." She told him.

"Take tomorrow off and go with you to Oppenheim for a run." he said around her finger. It hadn't been what he intended to say- He would have killed the boy. "I got something for you today, it came in with some other stuff in a house clearance and Sarah sent it over for me to decide what to do with it, and I thought, I know, Laura will love it." She still had her finger pressed to his lips. "It's in my pocket."

"It's not your cock again, is it," she asked, "because if you want me to jerk you off you just have to say, don't you know, that's one of the perks of being in a long established relationship." He laughed and worked his hand from over her bare thighs to the pocket of his jeans, and pulled out the small box.

"Well, if you don't want it," he said offering it out to her, "I'm sure I could find it a new home."

She made a happy squeal and grabbed at the box, she ignored the cream leather with it's embossed double headed eagle and the word beside it as she opened it, and made a quiet exhalation of a gasp at the ring.

It was white gold with two solitaire diamonds in a twist, one at each end of the gold. "Oh my god!" she said, "it's beautiful." Because that was what was important to Laura, that it was beautiful not that it was pre-revolutionary Faberge engagement ring, or even that it was an engagement ring or worth a years wage to many people, just that it was lovely. "Does it fit?" she said, "oh, god, Duke, it's perfect. Thank you. Thank you." She started peppering kisses on his jaw and cheeks, holding his face between her hands and dropping kisses all over it. He could feel the band on the ring on her left hand and couldn't help but smile as he tried to catch her lips as she dotted kisses on his lips. "You've made my awful day perfect, it's gorgeous, I have to show Derek, and he was whining, and I love it, I really love it."

"I'm glad of it," he said finally taking a kiss from her lips, "nothing but the best for my Lola."

"You spoil me." She said wrapping her arms about his neck, "you are the best mate a wolf could have."

"As long as I am the best mate your wolf can have." She rested her cheek against his, she was sat bracketing his hips with her thighs as he spoke.

"I wish you could see how happy you make me." She told him and there was a slight tremor in her voice.

"I don't need to see it, Lola," he said, nuzzling into her hair, "I know it."


	9. And in this horror show I've got to tell you so

Feb 2011

Deucalion had found a crocheted pair of gloves in the pocket of the sweater that he had put on that morning. They were fine, lace rather than warmth, but Laura had never cared about such details, he could feel the delicate work, the scallops she had put into the edging, and the smell of her in the fabric. She must have pulled the sweater on when she went out, but hung in the house it had lost all but the very faintest traces of her scent, but the gloves, on the contrary were rich with the smell of her.

He had rooted around in his rented apartment, the one he shared with the twins, for a zip loc bag so he wouldn't lose the scent of her, so he could preserve them and the part of her that lingered in the yarn.

"It's time." Kali said from the door.

He pressed the bag closed, stuffed it into his pocket, and stumbled towards the door. he hadn't lived in the house long enough that he didn't know his way around. There was a large table in the sitting room and the boy was draped across it. He smelled of bitter almond, cinnamon and the too sweet metallic linger of neroli, there was blood, sweat and fire lingering in his clothes, and faintly, but growing sweeter, and stronger was the black vitriol that was a bite rejected. He was also out cold. 

"Did you kill him?" Deucalion said, fumbling with the jars that he had left out for this purpose, to find the one with the correct label. He was so careful to make them clear to his fingers. He could hear his heart beat but humans were so fragile and Kali was so very good at killing them.

"I just gave him a little love tap." Kali said, turning her back on him. "He'll be fine, he was bitten." She shrugged it off, she didn't care, Deucalion wasn't even sure why she had agreed to come to California.

"He's rejecting the bite." Deucalion corrected to her. "Hold him down."

Ennis was better for this kind of detailed work, but Deucalion opened the jar and offered it to the other wolf. He simply had to trust that Ennis knew what he was doing as he used the tweezers to take the scales from the mineral oil that kept them inert, wiped them down and then inserted them into the wounds from the Alpha's bite. The girl had been treated with a herb that would safely, although not pleasantly, cause her body to flush out the toxins, the alpha had finally bit a viable candidate. This would treat the rejection and serve their purposes very well indeed.

\---

Deucalion sat in the leather chair by the window, the one where the draft smelled sweetly of the preserve, pulled out his earbuds and slipped them in. He wanted just a few moments to himself, as he thumbed the controls of his ipod. Laura's voice filled his ear. 

_"My anger equaled my amazement. I rushed at the mask and tried to snatch it away, so as to see the face of the voice. The man said, 'You are in no danger, so long as you do not touch the mask.' And, taking me gently by the wrists, he forced me into a chair and then went down on his knees before me and said nothing more! His humility gave me back some of my courage; and the light restored me to the realities of life. However extraordinary the adventure might be, I was now surrounded by mortal, visible, tangible things. The furniture, the hangings, the candles, the vases and the very flowers in their baskets, of which I could almost have told whence they came and what they cost, were bound to confine my imagination to the limits of a drawing-room quite as commonplace as any that, at least, had the excuse of not being in the cellars of the Opera. I had, no doubt, to do with a terrible, eccentric person, who, in some mysterious fashion, had succeeded in taking up his abode there, under the Opera house, five stories below the level of the ground. And the voice, the voice which I had recognized under the mask, was on its knees before me, WAS A MAN! And I began to cry... The man, still kneeling, must have understood the cause of my tears, for he said, 'It is true, Christine! ... I am not an Angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost ... I am Erik!'"_

_Christine's narrative was again interrupted. An echo behind them seemed to repeat the word after her._

_"Erik!"_

_What echo? ... They both turned round and saw that night had fallen. Raoul made a movement as though to rise, but Christine kept him beside her._

_"Don't go," she said. "I want you to know everything HERE!"_

_"But why here, Christine? I am afraid of your catching cold."_

_"We have nothing to fear except the trap-doors, dear, and here we are miles away from the trap-doors ... and I am not allowed to see you outside the theater. This is not the time to annoy him. We must not arouse his suspicion."_

_"Christine! Christine! Something tells me that we are wrong to wait till to-morrow evening and that we ought to fly at once."_

_"I tell you that, if he does not hear me sing tomorrow, it will cause him infinite pain."_

_"It is difficult not to cause him pain and yet to escape from him for good."_

_"You are right in that, Raoul, for certainly he will die of my flight." And she added in a dull voice, "But then it counts both ways ... for we risk his killing us."_

_"Does he love you so much?"_

_"He would commit murder for me."_

He stopped the ipod and in that moment he felt he knew exactly how the phantom felt, he wondered if he should break into song, a verse of the "music of the night" perhaps, and he hated himself too, because he was alive and she was dead and he wasn't ready to let her go.

If he thought it would bring her back he would slaughter the entirety of Beacon Hills, but an alpha Kanima was a beginning. The Moirae suggested that if he destroyed the Nemeton that they could bring her back. Deucalion wanted to believe them, he was in Beacon Hills on the chance because they had never lied to him, but he suddenly wasn't in the mood for Laura reading to him because he knew how the book ended, everyone knew, Christine went with the young viscomte, she left the phantom behind no matter how much he loved her.

"The boy's waking up," Ennis said from the door. Despite his bulk he was not a violent man, but he could be. In comparison his mate, Kali, was vicious but looked, at least as Deucalion remembered, like a supermodel, even if Ennis was the one who looked like a UFC fighter. 

Deucalion tugged out the buds from his ears, wrapped the wire around the ipod and slipped it back into his pocket. He flicked out his cane and walked back into the kitchen where the boy was tied. He was lashing and thrashing with his head bucking and black ichor was around his mouth, Deucalion could smell it, and the dry parchment smell of snakes.

"The magic has taken," Deucalion said and used his cane to find the kitchen stool and climbed up on it. "You know what I am." The kanima hissed in reaction. "But you are not quite ready for what I need. I need you in your alpha form and I have no interest in you until then. I am going to let you go until you are ready to ascend, I want you to spread your venom, and infection, but as your master I am going to put in two basic coda. You will not hurt Derek Hale or the Sheriff's son, you may incapacitate them but they are not to come to harm, do you understand? My pack is also off limits but you will not encounter them." The kanima gave a low hiss.

"I want you to do what you do, there is more than enough corruption in this town to feed your hunger, infect those who wish to use you, and when you are ready you will return to me, do you understand?" The kanima hissed again. 

"Until then be yourself, the hallucinations will come and go, but you won't remember this in your human face. You will rise like the elder gods and when you are ready we shall rebuild this town in our image, in your alpha form we will destroy the Nemeton." The kanima hissed. "Ennis, you can untie him now, and some coffee would be wonderful."

He could hear the slap of the leather straps, before Ennis took something from the drawer, then there was the noise of claws unsheathing and the boy made a noise, then a few splats of liquid hitting the ground. "Go home, kid, you don't remember this at all." He heard the kid pulling something over his shoulders, perhaps a hoodie. The dry musty smell was fading as he moved, and by the time he reached the door the stink of the kanima was gone.

\---

The man's blood was hot in Deucalion's mouth, sweet and salty all at the same time as the rain washed his face clean.

It had not been his intention.

He had simply found their small house oppressive, the walls too close and the smells too thick, Kali's rage and Ennis quiet chagrin, the testosterone of the twins and the stupid every day scents of carpet cleaner and dish washing detergent and irish spring soap.

So he had pulled on his coat, snapped out his cane and walked. He walked past the kanima's house just to hear what was going on, to tell if the boy had reached his full transformation yet. Instead he caught the scent of a new wolf, a boy in the throes of a successful transformation. Then there was the shouting, the sound of breaking glass and furniture overturned. The boy ran out into the rain, his footfalls even though his breath was hitching with sobs before he got onto a bike and cycled off into the sheeting rain, and then the man came out calling for him, unaware of Deucalion and the cold rage settling in his belly.

Of all the horrors in the world none was more certain to bring out the demon than the sound of a parent beating their child.

Some demons, Deucalion knew, lived under the skin, no matter how thick the scar tissue grew, they just needed a little push to claw their way back to the surface.

So with the wolf pushing at the boundaries of his skin, his claws tearing free from under his human fingernails and his teeth ripping free of his gums with blood - so strong was the violence of the change, he followed the man in his car, and when he stopped - he ripped away the door and started to tear, blood splattering the interior as the rain soaked Deucalion to the skin.

It didn't matter, he knew, as the man lay whimpering beneath him, crying like all bullies cried when it was over, like Deucalion's father had cried at the very end, the kanima would take the blame.


	10. And your tears feel hot on my bedsheets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> March 2007

March 2007 (Laura is 18, about to turn 19)

Laura had two rules when it came to sex, anything strange had to be negotiated before hand, that doesn't mean it was forbidden, just she liked a little warning before hand even if she was going to say yes, nothing where Mrs Cates, their housekeeper, might interrupt, because that was just embarrassing for the three of them, and never anything that might traumatise Derek if he interrupted them, other than that, anything went.

Laura loved sex, she was eager and vocal and willing to experiment. If business took him away she was always delighted to see him return, and almost violent in her glee in showing him that. They had gone through several parlour rugs that way. Anything left was cleaned before Mrs Cates came in twice a week.

So Deucalion should not have been surprise when she instigated sex, because she did often, what did surprise him was the how.

There was a work party, one of those awful affairs where they mingled with the buyers who kept them in business, where some of their more expensive and rare items were showcased so they could see what it was that they were bidding on. His contact in Kyoto had brought him a set of hair pins that had been used by an empress before world war one, and had photos to back it up. The provenance was sound and they were the sort of valuable that was worth a showing. There were other items, a jade box, several very valuable kimono, and a sutra that was supposed to be able to dispel demons if read aloud. It was the jewel of the collection and the provenance meant that Sarah had valued it at three quarter of million dollars.

So there was a party, the first one since Laura had come to live with him because he had been so fixated on his two priorities, well those that were not Laura and Derek, finding out what the Council was doing about the Argents who had almost certainly burned down the Hale house even if the insurance investigator had been clearly paid off, and the goddamn Asou collection.

She came in with perfume in her hair when he was dressing. She was wearing a dress that rustled about her ankles and there was earrings that chimed when she moved her head. "I don't like this dress." She said. "And this close to the full moon, I'm feeling territorial. I don't want to share you." She was pouting and he wanted to kiss her, to suck on that full lower lip until she opened her mouth to him. He understood her need. "So I want you to fuck me, to fuck me and then fuck my ass so that your come is slipping out of me." She pushed him backwards unto the bed, pulling at his belt, "oozing into my gold satin panties so that when we're at the party you'll smell me and know I'm yours, and that you're mine. How does that sound?"

He didn't answer her in words, he put his hands on the straps of her dress and pulled it apart, tearing the fabric down the middle to reveal the skin underneath as it fell down around her waist. "You gonna fuck me, Duke," she wasn't wearing any underwear, least of all the gold satin panties she had teased him with. Her hand was wicked as it reached into his briefs and pulled out his cock, still soft but reacting to her with it's usual alacrity.

His hands reached up to her breasts. She was not full breasted like some women he had known, in fact she barely filled a b-cup as she complained to him many times before, but he liked her breasts. They weren't very sensitive and she had small tight nipples but she always made the delighted gasp when he pinched them hard before bringing his mouth to her. She liked a little pain with her pleasure, like most wolves did.

With one hand fisted in her hair he pulled her down to him, suckling her breast into his mouth with his fangs out to play, so he could scrape the edges of them against the aureola because that was what she liked best. With one hand she moved his cock, still too soft for her liking, between her thighs, between her labia and began to rock back and forth, masturbating herself against him. She was wet and slick but he got the impression that there was lube there as well as her own natural wetness. 

"God, you're gorgeous," she said, rocking back and forth with her thighs, "I never know if I want to worship you or just plain ride you like a rodeo bull." All the things that Laura was, polite during sex wasn't one of them. 

"I could get behind that." He muttered, switching from the left to the right breast, his fingers tugging at her hair as his claws scraped along the shell of her ear.

"That's because you spoil me," she answered, the head of his cock slipping against her clit so she hissed as she said it, "we don't do this enough."

"We still have that party to go to, I want to show you off, to show I drape my lady in silk and pu-h" he made a noise into her breast as she reached behind herself to squeeze his balls, "rls."

"You've never given me a fur," she was arched back and he was curled around her, still wearing his dress shirt with his pants pulled down around his knees, so she could roll his balls in her palm.

"Don't need one," he said, she ground down hard, squeezing his cock between them, "my lady has her own."

"Cocky," she teased as she kissed his head, "fuck the party, no," she corrected, "fuck me." She lifted herself up, angled his cock up and adjusted herself so that the head of his cock breached her with a delicious whine, "fuck me, Duke, show them who owns you."

And who was he to deny her?

\---

She went to the party in another dress, with a remote control vibrator slipped into the gusset of her gold satin panties, ones that matched the dress she had always intended to wear, a knit micro dress with long sleeves that was entirely backless, but stitched with gold sequins and beads that brought out, Deucalion was told, the olive tints in her pale skin. She wore her hair down with the scents of her perfume and his sweat tangled in it, and those large earrings that chimed when she moved her head.

He had not thought her an exhibitionist but there was a wonder in knowing that he could, with just the press of a button, make her come and that no one here would know. No one would know how well she had used him, how she was oozing his come, to them she was just a beautiful young girl that Deucalion had brought on his arm at this party he was throwing so they would buy his pretty trinkets and he could pay for his pretty girl.

"Laura," Sarah said walking over. She favoured black dresses and comfortable pumps, she let the jewellery she was wearing make the statement for her, it was usually something from an upcoming sale, but something not available yet. At the next party Laura would probably do the same. He wondered if Sarah had one of the kinzashi twisted into her dark hair. "You look beautiful, you are glowing."

"It's all the dress," Laura said air kissing Sarah on the cheek, "I think as much of my blood is in the beading as knit, I sewed myself cross eyed making it, I'm just glad it looks so good, don't you think." She took a few small steps, clearly turning around to show the dress off to Sarah. "I didn't want to let Duke down, I had to look as expensive as my ring." She showed it to Sarah who made the appropriate noise although she had picked it. "We must do dinner, you can get to meet my brother, maybe go shopping, you should see Duke's wardrobe," she rolled her eyes, "you'd think he was blind with the way he dresses."

And Sarah laughed because the joke was well meaning and fond, "I've been doing my best." Sarah agreed, "but he's as stubborn as an old dog, and it's not like he can see that these things are ugly, they're," and Laura chimed in, "comfortable."

"I know, one of these days Morrison will come and get me from college and he'll be telling me that someone," she said that in a tone that was both arch and fond, "will be in pyjamas, or worse."

"Sweat pants to go with his old man cardigans." Sarah offered.

"I love you both, too," Deucalion said with a fake smile. "New perfume, Sarah?" he tried to change the subject.

"No," she told him, before stepping over to kiss his cheek, "new shower gel. It's almond based, Laura, I must get you a bottle, it's a gift from the gods, it's made my skin so very soft, it was Jana who recommended it to me, have I introduced you to Jana?" And then they were walking away and everything fell in place, Laura slotting into these parties like she had always been part of them, and it was only a matter of time before she was the one in the black dress wearing the expensive jewellery as a show case, but now she was the one in the gold dress wearing the chiming ear rings with a vibrating bullet in her gold satin panties.

\---

"That was exhausting," Laura said flopping back unto the seat of their town car as Morrison drove them home, "I don't ever want to do that again, has no one told Powell he smells? like really badly. He has his own proximity warning, you can tell exactly how far away he is. Tell me again, how very rich he is and how much he buys."

"Very rich," he murmured into her neck, she was rich with the smells of the party, of their sex earlier, of the garlic that had been baked into the lasagne that they had eaten before they had dressed for the party. "And he buys lots."

"Perhaps with his next purchase we can throw in all those tins of Axe that Derek clings to, even though he can't stand the smell any more than we can." He chuffed a laugh into her neck as his hand curled up the line of her rib, under her breast to discover she wore no bra. He would have thought her a tease if she wasn't more than delighted to have sex with him. "Enough of it and maybe he won't be quite so offensive. He stinks like a locker room. Derek's sports socks smell better than that man."

Derek's sports socks were a thing of terrible legend. The McKerrits used fire tongs to carry them into the garden with a cloth over their faces before burning them. They joked that those socks were possessed of the devil and with the same stern face they refused to wash his jock strap. Even Mrs Cates refused to handle his socks and she didn't have a supernatural sense of smell. Derek was left to boil them clean himself. Deucalion didn't remember his own socks being so vile when he was a teenager, but they must have been, but he did suspect that if left for more than a day those socks would have crawled to the wash bucket on their own.

"Derek's socks are a thing of supernatural wonder, I'm sure we should sell them to the US government as a biohazard to use in battle."

"If it would secure your wealth you'd no longer have to invite Powell to those parties." She said with a laugh in her voice, he loved it when she laughed, and she made him laugh, and he had never been quick to laughter, like his father he had a tendency to the cruel. It was not something he had cultivated but it still existed, but with Laura he laughed, sometimes he woke up laughing, so infected with the simple joy of being with her.


End file.
